Charles Kong Soo

Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Al­lan Bachan says tur­tle watch­ing has the po­ten­tial to at­tract a larg­er in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence and sur­pass Car­ni­val as a rev­enue earn­er.He was speak­ing at the launch of the tur­tle sea­son 2013 at the Va­len­cia Vis­i­tor Cen­tre last week.

A Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing was al­so signed be­tween the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust and long-serv­ing cor­po­rate spon­sor, At­lantic, af­ter which Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh said more than $29 mil­lion will be dis­bursed to var­i­ous tur­tle con­ser­va­tion bod­ies over the next four years."As de­vel­op­ers, politi­cians and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers we should start to see ma­rine tur­tles as a valu­able as­set, gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic val­ue and jobs," Bachan said.

"If man­aged prop­er­ly, tur­tle tourism has the po­ten­tial to sur­pass Car­ni­val in so­cio-eco­nom­ic val­ue.The val­ue of sea tur­tles at Grande Riv­iere can be seen by the in­vest­ment in ac­com­mo­da­tions in this com­mu­ni­ty."He said the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, ho­tels and guest hous­es al­so ben­e­fit­ed from tur­tle watch­ing.

Bachan said the to­tal av­er­age rev­enue for the sea­son for guest hous­es, ho­tels, shops, food es­tab­lish­ments, bars and agro-tourism was $53 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly. He said the eco­nom­ic val­ue of a sea tur­tle can be val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $26,000.At­lantic CEO Nigel Dar­low said sea tur­tles had con­tributed to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of eco­tourism in T&T. He said it was a fact that if there were no sea tur­tles, the lo­cal ma­rine ecosys­tem would even­tu­al­ly col­lapse.

Dar­low said this dis­as­ter was avert­ed due to the com­mu­ni­ty, stake­hold­ers and com­pa­nies like At­lantic. He said the tur­tle pop­u­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly leatherback tur­tles, was now sta­bilised be­cause of their col­lec­tive ef­fort. Min­is­ter of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for To­co/San­gre Grande Dr­Ru­pert Grif­fith said an es­ti­mat­ed 10,000 leatherback tur­tles now nest­ed in Trinidad com­pared to 500 in 1987, plac­ing the pop­u­la­tion as the largest in the west­ern hemi­sphere and per­haps the world.

He said this has re­sult­ed in the north-east­ern dis­trict of Trinidad at­tract­ing a large num­ber of vis­i­tors both lo­cal and for­eign an­nu­al­ly to wit­ness the nest­ing spec­ta­cle.Grif­fith said this in­ter­est has trans­lat­ed in­to in­creased so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment for the re­gion.Al­so present was Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust chair­man Natasha Ash­by.