Costa Rica Turtle Egg Harvest Protest Email

Outline
Email that call for a stop to a supposed "attack against nature" on the beaches of Costa Rica claims that a series of attached photographs depict crowds of people digging up and stealing turtle eggs that they will later sell.



Brief Analysis
The photographs are genuine, but they do not depict the illegal poaching of turtle eggs. In fact, the egg harvest shown in the photographs is a perfectly legal and strictly controlled event that is managed by the Costa Rican government and been in operation since the 1980's. Far from being an "attack against nature", the egg harvest is an integral part of a long term conservation program that has resulted in a significant increase in the successful hatchings of Olive Ridley Turtles.

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Last updated: 25th February 2010
First published: 25th February 2010
Article written by Brett M. Christensen
About Brett Christensen and Hoax-Slayer

Example


Detailed Analysis
Every picture tells a story, they say. However, just how accurate and relevant that story may be is dependant on the context in which the picture appears and the preconceptions and expectations of the viewer. Things are not always what they seem.

This widely circulated series of images depicting the collection of turtle eggs from a beach in Costa Rica is a case in point. The photographs themselves are perfectly genuine and they certainly do show the harvesting of turtle eggs. However, this egg harvest is not an illegal poaching operation nor is it an environmentally destructive "attack against nature" as suggested in the text that accompanies these photographs.

Instead, the turtle egg harvest is an important part of a long-term environmental project developed and managed by the Costa Rican government. The photographs show an egg harvest by villagers at Ostional beach, a remote community near Punta Gurones on Costa Rica's Pacific coast. In 1983, the Costa Rican government created the Ostional Wildlife Refuge in the area and later initiated the Egg Harvest Project (EHP). The EHP allowed villagers to continue their traditional practice of harvesting eggs while furthering the long term goal of assisting in the conservation and recovery of the Olive Ridley turtle species. The harvests are strictly controlled, with villagers only allowed to take eggs within the first day and a half of each egg laying event, known as an "arribada". An article about the Olive Ridley turtle published on the Ocean Actions website notes:

The capacity of the half mile Ostional beach is insufficient for the large number of nesting turtles and as a result many clutches are destroyed in the nesting process. As thousands upon thousands of Olive Ridley turtles climb on to a stretch of Playa Ostional, 70-80% of previously laid nests are crushed or dug up during the subsequent nesting. It is for this reason that the Egg Harvest Project is justified. Villagers wait and watch, harvesting the eggs laid in the first day and half of the arribada.

Over the years this practice has proven to increase the percentage of successful hatching by as much as 20%. Assessing a sea turtle population is a challenge, but nesting data in Ostional indicate a stable population. A major contribution to the success of the Egg Harvest Project is the lack of decomposing eggs. If the (sic) left unharvested, the early nests that are destroyed by later nesting females act as a source of bacteria that can contaminate the later nests.

A 1998 article by John Burnett, correspondent for National Public Radio, also discusses the project:

The age-old belief in the aphrodisiac power of turtle eggs sustains a thriving black market for the forbidden ovum throughout Latin America. Most countries have banned the collection of these eggs because the world's eight sea turtle species are endangered by disease, incidental capture in fishing nets, disturbance of nesting areas, and poaching of eggs and turtles.

But in the coastal town of Ostional, located on Costa Rica's Guanacaste Peninsula, a 13-year-old project has helped stabilize the population of the olive ridley sea turtle. The government has, in essence, legalized poaching.

For 10 months of the year, usually around the third quarter of the moon, olive ridleys swim by the hundreds of thousands to a single mile of beach at Ostional in an ancient reproductive rite little understood by scientists. They scuttle onto the sand, dig a hole with their flippers, and drop in an average of 100 leathery, white eggs the size of ping pong balls. Over the course of a five-day "arribada," literally, an arrival, nesting females will leave as many as 10 million eggs in the black, volcanic sand. Mass nesting is nature's way of ensuring that after the turkey vultures, feral dogs and raccoons have eaten all the fresh eggs they want, there will be enough left over to produce a sustainable population of olive ridleys.

In the early 1980s, scientists learned that because of limited space on the beach, females arriving later destroy the first laid eggs. The researchers wondered: why not let poachers have the doomed eggs?

"What we have done is turn people into predators," says Dr. Anny Chavez, a sea turtle biologist and one of the founders of the Ostional project, which is world famous among turtle activists.

Under a law written especially for Ostional, the government allows an egg harvesting cooperative to collect all they can during the first 36 hours of every arribada. Coop members then truck the eggs around the country, selling them to bars and restaurants. In return, the community must protect the olive ridley. Coop members clean debris from the nesting areas and patrol the beach day and night for poachers. Forty days later, when the hatchlings emerge, children from the Ostional Primary school run to the beach.

Other photographs of Ostional available online clearly show that the photographs in the above sequence do indeed depict the beach at Ostional. And, if the images really did depict an illegal poaching activity, the large crowd of would-be poachers shown would very likely be more clandestine in their activities. Those egg harvesters shown in the images are obviously conducting their activities in a very open manner and clearly show no objection to being photographed. Not the sort of behaviour one would expect from callous poachers engaging in illegal activities.

Thus, the suggestion in this "protest" email that images depict an event of "world wide shame" and an 'attack against nature' is misguided. And the request to send the message on in the hope of stopping the egg harvest is also misguided. As noted above, the Egg Harvest Project at Ostional helps to protect and sustain this precious species. The project represents an innovative, and so far successful approach to species protection. Spreading misinformation in the form of this inflammatory and misleading protest message will serve only to divert attention away from genuine environmental concerns. The illegal and uncontrolled poaching of sea turtle eggs, meat and shells in many parts of the world represents a real and ongoing threat to turtle species. But, castigating and misrepresenting a group of people who have, for many years, participated in a perfectly legal egg harvest that has demonstrably improved the long term outlook for Olive Ridley turtles is counterproductive to say the least.



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References
Olive Ridley Turtle
Costa Rican Villagers Sell Turtle Eggs to Save Sea Turtles, but Feud with Scientists
Volunteer Ostional Sea Turtle Refuge Project
ADIO (Asociación de Desarrollo Integral de Ostional)
Money Talks - economic aspects of marine turtle use and conservation

Last updated: 25th February 2010
First published: 25th February 2010
Article written by Brett M. Christensen
About Brett Christensen and Hoax-Slayer