In terms of the turtles themselves, the slide tells us that 

 we must leave the larger juveniles and adults alone. Each of 

 them is extremely valuable to the population, and every one we 

 remove takes a lot of value from the population. Even if we are 

 headstarting and releasing turtles into the population, we'd 

 better not harvest any large juveniles or adults unless we are 

 absolutely certain that the headstarting is working. 



Finally, if we are absolutely unwilling to stop taking the 

 turtles themselves, then the figure directs us to another 

 management option to minimize the impact of our harvesting. We 

 must establish size limits. But the figure tells us that we've 

 been doing this incorrectly for over 350 years. We should not 

 set a minimum size limit to protect small turtles. We should set 

 a maximum size limit to ensure that large turtles are not taken! 

 We must restrict our fishermen to taking the smaller turtles of 

 lesser value to the population. Unfortunately, these small 

 turtles are likely to be of lesser value to our fishermen, as 

 well. 



I stress that these answers are based on the biology of sea 

 turtles. The questions assume that we are unwilling or unable to 

 resist harvesting sea turtles or their eggs. 



Please do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating any of 

 these harvests. Sea turtles are declining, and if we continue to 

 harvest them and to destroy their habitat, they will disappear, 

 and the potential for the resource will be lost. The wisest move 

 to ensure the presence of the resource base in the future would 

 probably be to institute a moratorium immediately until their 

 populations recover. 



If turtles must be harvested then following the dictates of 

 the best models we now have will minimize, although not 

 eliminate, the impact of your harvest on the continued existence 

 of the turtle populations. That is, the models may enable us to 

 destroy the resource base a little more slowly. 



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