I've been in Grenada for nearly a week, looking for turtles–the "eating kind." I want to document the capture, sale and consumption of sea turtles. Leatherback turtles are protected here, but there's an eight-month hunting season for the endangered green turtles and the critically endangered hawksbill turtles.
Turtle hunting and consumption is a bit of a sub-culture. Like most sub-cultures, its workings are known only to the initiated. Anything can be unravelled; you just need to find the loose thread. After a week of visiting fish markets, I have yet to see a turtle for sale. The loose thread is elusive. I haven't actually seen any turtles for sale. I must search harder.What I've learnt so far: turtle meat is sold for EC$7 per lb. For comparison, chicken is EC$4.25 per lb and smoked herring EC$8 per lb.
Few fishermen target turtles–maybe six or seven derive a primary income from the hunt. Small in number, they can do a lot of damage. One fisherman, by his own reckoning, as retold to me by Marina Fastigi, PhD, of the Kido Foundation in Cariacou, catches up to 900 turtles a year. There's a huge discrepancy between that figure and data from the Grenada fisheries division–officially about 50 turtles are landed annually.
When you close one market, you open another. Sea turtle hunting was outlawed in T&T in 2010. Sea turtles are also regulated by CITES, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.A persistent rumour is that the T&T turtle ban has created an export market for Grenadian turtle meat. It's said to enter the country via the small island-trader cargo vessels, which dock next to the Tobago ferry in PoS harbour. If true, that's a clear CITES violation.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members