Sea turtles were declared endangered in the United States in 1973, and eating them has been illegal in Mexico for a decade. But along the coast of the Baja peninsula in western Mexico, the turtle is the equivalent of the holiday ham (with purported Viagra-like powers, too), and it is eaten in most households at least a few times a year. Last week the poachers–small-time fishermen hunting for their families, as well as organized smugglers who send turtle meat as far north as Los Angeles–were thought to be out in full force preparing for Easter, the biggest turtle-eating holiday of the year. Although consumption has decimated the population, rumors of a coming crackdown on poachers and a growing conservation movement led by U.S. scientists have made residents more cautious about their culinary habit.
Earlier this month Rangel was keeping a sea turtle in front of his shack on Magdalena Island, just off Baja. He had fashioned a cage from lobster traps, old tires, plywood and the rusty tail hatch of a pickup. He pulled it out to have a look. Sea turtles can swim 50 miles a day, but on land they’re helpless. This one, probably 40 years old, dragged her three-foot-long body through the sand. “It is not mine,” Rangel said. “A friend dropped her off this morning.”
The Baja is a collage of white sand dunes, green mangroves and amber mountains, but its real treasure is the waters. Fed by nutrient-rich cool ocean flows, they are a mecca for marine wildlife, including sea turtles. Of the seven species of turtle, Baja is home to five. Loggerhead turtles, hatched on beaches in Japan, float with Pacific currents for the first three years of their lives to Baja, where they spend the next three decades or so eating algae and crabs before crossing the Pacific again to breed. Green turtles nest on Mexico’s southern beaches, but many spend much of their adult lives commuting to the waters around Baja. Discerning turtle eaters say the greens taste best.
People in Baja have been barbecuing sea turtles for centuries. The eggs are a delicacy in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. But in Baja, where the desert conditions make it difficult to raise cattle, turtles–dubbed “the black steer”–once were a major source of protein. The destruction of the turtle population was well underway back in the 1960s. Nobody knows how many remain today, but all seven species are in trouble. In Colola, a beach town in the state of Michoacan and the most important nesting ground, the number of green turtles laying eggs declined from 1,280 in 1990 to 145 last year. Each female digs a hole in the sand and deposits up to 200 eggs. Birds pick off many freshly hatched turtles on their inaugural journey across the beach to the water. Others are easy prey for fish. The remaining 1 percent then have to deal with humans. Wallace J. Nichols, 33, an American biologist who has studied Baja turtles for eight years, estimates that at least 7,800 turtles–and perhaps as many as 30,000–are killed each year by poachers. In his surveys of Baja fishing towns, 94 percent of residents report having eaten turtle in the past year. Behind the Center for Coastal Studies in Puerto San Carlos, a U.S.-funded research group where Nichols works, he has assembled a graveyard of about 300 turtle shells collected from dumps during the last year and a half. “Many of these are females,” he says. “They should be alive, laying eggs, bringing the population back.”
Along the Baja coast, a dead turtle is still valued more than a live one. A newspaper last year reported that foreign conservationists were part of a religious cult. And prohibition has turned the turtle into a romantic symbol in the popular lore, the food of drug traffickers and powerful politicians. Others favor it for nourishment. “You feel the power of the vitamins of the turtle. Some people drink the blood,” says Antonio Vargas, a 60-year-old fisherman. “When we eat turtle, we don’t use a towel to clean our fingers. We lick them clean.”
With demand high and supply diminishing, turtle poaching is more profitable than ever. High-volume poachers can afford speedboats to run captured turtles up the coast to southern California, where clandestine restaurants serve turtle soup and tacos. Because heavily armed drug traffickers ply the same routes, Mexico’s Environment Ministry decided long ago that enforcing the laws against poachers was too risky. Corruption might have had something to do with it, too. One restaurant owner says government officials, and even anti-poaching authorities, have attended his private turtle roasts. Convictions are rare–Nichols says he knows of just one, back in 1993, when a man was caught with 19 turtles in his truck. Last year a suspected poacher was caught and released after two days in jail. Small-time poachers–the fishermen who go turtle hunting around the holidays and thank the Lord when the odd turtle gets trapped in a fishing net at other times of the year–flaunt the law routinely. One fisherman said he considered throwing back a turtle he caught recently, but instead sold it for $80. “I needed the money,” he says. “A tank of gas now costs 400 pesos”–about $42.
With a new government in office vowing to impose the rule of law, turtle slayers are no longer quite as relaxed as they’ve been in the past. The restaurant owner says he has been boiling turtle lately instead of roasting it, to avoid sending the familiar odors into the neighborhood. And one fisherman says that when he catches a turtle, he hacks off the flippers and throws the rest of the turtle back into the ocean: “Too risky to have a turtle in your boat.”
There are signs that attitudes are slowly beginning to change. Nichols has helped organize fishermen into anti-poaching patrols to save turtles and other sea creatures, such as fish, scallops and shrimp. Some of them talk of someday building a tourist industry based on turtle watching. “The turtle is in danger of extinction,” says Gabriel Sarrabia, a 27-year-old fisherman. “It is something we will lose from the planet.” And if the turtles can survive a generation, there may be hope. Rodrigo Rangel grew up in a turtle-eating family. “You believe in God because your parents teach you he exists,” he says. “This is also why you eat turtle.” But two years ago he began working with Nichols, and he has become something of a conservationist. He has abstained from turtle for the last year, though he hasn’t bothered to try to stop his father, Jorge. “I can’t say anything to him,” says the son. He didn’t want to know about the remnants of his family’s barbecue last week: a three-foot-long shell in the backyard.
