WHEN the signal from a huge sea turtle that was being tracked by satellite
disappeared, researchers thought its transmitter had fallen off. In fact the
turtle had found its way onto the menu at a Mexican village barbecue. Scientists
are now hoping to retrieve the $2500 transmitter the animal carried.
The San Diego-based conservation group Wildcoast had tracked the movement of
the 110-kilograms East Pacific green turtle since December. It swam from its
nesting site in southern Mexico to feeding grounds in Baja California, a
1500-kilometre peninsula on Mexico’s Pacific coast. But signals from the
turtle’s transmitter stopped in March.
In mid-July, Wildcoast biologist Wallace Nichols quizzed poachers at his
research site in Magdalena Bay, a coastal lagoon in southern Baja. They told him
the 50-year-old turtle had been scoffed at a village barbecue.
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“They said it was a big party—about 100 people took part,” says
Nichols. “It’s kind of a drag to track a turtle for months and find out someone
ate it.” Thousands of schoolchildren had been following the turtle’s journey on
the Internet.
Mexico’s coastal waters are home to five species of sea turtles, all of which
are protected under Mexican law. However, enforcement is minimal and the green
turtle is prized for its meat. Recent studies at the Autonomous University of
Baja California Sur in La Paz, Mexico, suggested that people in Baja California
Sur eat around 30,000 green turtles each year. Nichols thinks about 25 of the
300 turtles he has tracked in the past eight years shared the same fate.
He hopes to retrieve the turtle’s transmitter on a future trip. Someone may
have taken the transmitter as a souvenir, but if they take it outside, Wildcoast
might pick up the signal and locate it.