nesting areas only. For example, in the British Virgin Islands, 

 many coastal features (e.g., "Trunk Bay" on Virgin Gorda) are 

 named after the leatherback turtle, yet few BVI beaches support 

 leatherback nesting today. Eckert (1988) concluded that an 

 active subsistence fishery for the species in the Virgin Islands 

 had contributed to a substantial decline from historical 

 population levels. Similarly, during the 1987 season, Alfaro et 

 al. (1987) found only one nest on the Buritaca Beach in the Santa 

 Marta Peninsula of Colombia, a zone of intensive exploitation of 

 turtles that is known to have constituted a leatherback nesting 

 beach in former years (Kaufmann 1971b) . Furthermore, the nesting 

 beach in Espirito Santo, Brazil, has been under heavy pressure 

 from relocated Kunai Indians in the area, who lack alternative 

 means of sustenance, and this population, too, seems to be 

 significantly reduced (R. Heimark, in letters to S. Beebe, May 

 1984) . 



Elsewhere in the world, the populations of southeast Asia 

 have been especially hard hit, almost entirely through excessive 

 collection of eggs, and the vital nesting colony in Trengganu, 

 Malaysia, is seriously depleted and in need of a completely 

 revised management regimen. 



Identifiable Stresses upon Leatherback Populations in the Western 

 Atlantic 



In the United States, the leatherback is protected by law 

 and nesting animals are reasonably safe; but strandings of dead 

 animals occur quite frequently, especially in areas north of 

 Florida. These may result from entanglement in lobster lines, 

 ingestion of plastics and other anthropogenic causes, and 

 undoubtedly cause some degree of stress to the population as a 

 whole. 



In the area from Costa Rica to Colombia, the collection of 

 eggs by local people for food or sale is so intensive that few 

 nests survive, although some conservation efforts have now been 

 initiated in Costa Rica, specifically at Doce Millas beach near 

 Limon (M. Koberg, pers. comm.). In Colombia, Trinidad, and 

 Guyana, a substantial percentage of the nesting animals are 

 killed on the beaches, and the eggs of such turtles are taken 

 also, either from the beach or from the carcasses of the 

 slaughtered turtles. On the other hand, the turtles seem to be 

 well protected in both Surinam and French Guiana, although even 

 here there are some problems, notably civil unrest in Surinam, 

 and heavy tourist use of the Les Hattes nesting beaches, and 

 incidental catch in the nets of local Carib fishermen, in French 

 Guiana. 



In the Antilles, direct human take of the turtles may be 

 quite intensive. Meylan et al. (1985) noted that leatherbacks 

 are eaten on almost every island from Anguilla south to Grenada, 



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