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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Poachers, nets kill turtles at Matura

by

20140329

With­in the past few days, five leatherback tur­tles have washed up dead on the shore of Matu­ra Beach.The in­ci­dents were made pub­lic by Na­ture Seek­ers di­rec­tor Den­nis Sam­my in a re­lease to the me­dia on Thurs­day. Sam­my said four of the tur­tles died as a re­sult of be­com­ing en­tan­gled in fish­ing nets, while one un­for­tu­nate fe­male tur­tle was poached and killed."The fe­male tur­tle washed ashore with­out the head or flip­pers," Sam­my said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian.

Sam­my said these in­ci­dents in­di­cat­ed that the num­bers of tur­tle deaths would rise in the com­ing months, as it had on­ly been a month since the nest­ing sea­son start­ed. He said sea tur­tle by-catch was a ma­jor prob­lem, as tur­tles that were caught in fish­ing nets could not come up for air and even­tu­al­ly drowned. By-catch refers to any­thing fish­er­men un­in­ten­tion­al­ly catch in their nets while ply­ing their trade.

"Re­search shows that more than 1,000 tur­tles are killed each year," he said. "One fish­er­man in­di­cat­ed to Na­ture Seek­ers in 2011 that 97 tur­tles were killed in his net."Sam­my said the alarm­ing num­ber of tur­tle deaths will mean this coun­try will not be able to sus­tain its healthy pop­u­la­tion of tur­tles.Na­ture Seek­ers, in part­ner­ship with state agen­cies and NGOs, he said, had de­vel­oped a project to ad­dress the prob­lem of by-catch, which in­volves pro­vid­ing al­ter­na­tive forms of fish­ing for fish­er­men dur­ing tur­tle sea­son.

"We al­so want to raise aware­ness amongst fish­er­folk and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties of the risk of us­ing nets dur­ing the sea­son."Sam­my said the groups were await­ing the ap­proval of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Bi­ol­o­gy to im­ple­ment the project. On the is­sue of poach­ing, Sam­my said the Forestry Di­vi­sion and the Tur­tle Vil­lage had been on pa­trol since the sea­son start­ed, to keep away poach­ers on land.

What the law says

Un­der the Fish­eries Act, No per­son shall:

(a) take or re­move or cause to be re­moved any tur­tle eggs af­ter they have been laid and buried by any fe­male tur­tle or af­ter they have been buried by any per­son; or

(b) pur­chase, sell, of­fer or ex­pose for sale or cause to be sold or of­fered or ex­posed for sale or be in pos­ses­sion of any tur­tle eggs.

3. No per­son shall, at any time, kill, har­poon, catch or oth­er­wise take pos­ses­sion of any tur­tle, or pur­chase, sell, of­fer or ex­pose for sale or cause to be sold or of­fered or ex­posed for sale any tur­tle, tur­tle meat or any oth­er part of the tur­tle.

Tur­tle nest­ing sea­son

The sea tur­tle nest­ing sea­son lasts from March to Au­gust and dur­ing this time more than 10,000 tur­tles are ex­pect­ed to vis­it Trinidad's east­ern beach­es. The sea tur­tles trav­el across the At­lantic Ocean, mak­ing their way up the beach­es.The fe­male tur­tles dig holes with their rear flip­pers and lay 80-100 eggs, a process they can re­peat up to 12 times dur­ing breed­ing sea­son. The eggs will hatch in about two months, and then the ba­by tur­tles make their jour­ney back in­to the ocean.

In 1990, Matu­ra Bay was des­ig­nat­ed a pro­hib­it­ed area un­der the For­est Act (Chap 66:01) dur­ing the nest sea­son, ow­ing to the wide­spread slaugh­ter of egg-bear­ing fe­males by poach­ers. Peo­ple wish­ing to vis­it the beach must ob­tain a per­mit to en­ter the pro­hib­it­ed area from the Forestry Di­vi­son. Any­one found on the beach with­out a per­mit dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son can be fined $20,000.


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