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Nusa Kambangan, separated from Java’s mainland by a narrow sea strait, is almost entirely under the authority of the Prison Service of the Department of Justice because of the three high-security prisons located on the island. The island is off-limits to most visitors and known to be a nesting area for the olive ridley, green and hawksbill (Tomascik et al. 1996). Cilacap is a small fishing town in a growing industrial area, with several black sandy beaches amongst which lies Pantai Teluk Penyu (‘Turtle Bay Beach’), a now heavily eroded former turtle nesting beach. Cilacap has the only natural harbor with deep-water berthing facilities on Java’s south coast as well as an oil terminal and is therefore visited by larger vessels. The town is visited by domestic tourists from the bigger West Javanese cities such as Bandung and Jakarta, and by foreign tourists who want to do the backwater trip from Cilacap to Pangandaran. Pantai Teluk Penyu is surrounded by dozens of souvenir stalls and shops “selling an array of shells and other ecologically unsound items,” according to the Lonely Planet travel guide book (Turner et al. 2000).

The Lonely Planet was all too right, but even far beyond our worst fears. Not only were all these shops, of which we entered only about ten, selling huge numbers of shells, Scleractinian corals, sea stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, sea horses, stuffed sharks, and more, but they were almost all also selling large numbers of stuffed mature and juvenile olive ridleys, hawksbills, green turtles, and dried turtle penises. Also, most shops were selling hundreds of small bottles (approx. 150 ml) of “minyak bulus” or turtle oil, described by the vendorsto as a ‘wonderful aphrodisiac’ and medicine against almost everything.

The first shop we entered displayed 35 stuffed turtles: 15 olive ridleys (11 adults, 4 juveniles), 11 hawksbills (2 adults, 9 juveniles), 8 green turtles (1 adult, 7 juveniles) and 1 mature loggerhead. The other shops we entered were similar. In one shop, a new ‘freshly dead’ mature olive ridley female was delivered by a local fisherman in front of our eyes. After this, the shop owner asked if we would like to see a live turtle and a child went to get a juvenile hawksbill from the back of the shop, not yet killed. Shop owners told us that the turtles were either caught by local fishermen while nesting on Nusa Kambangan, or while feeding in the surrounding waters. This explained the wide variety of size classes.

The situation in Pangandaran (approx. 40 km west of Cilacap), a very popular beach resort for both domestic (on weekends and public holidays) and foreign tourists amongst whom many were backpackers, was no better. There were even more souvenir shops than at Cilacap. In front of the eyes of the PHKA (Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation), hundreds of stuffed sea turtles and bottles of turtle oil were being sold in souvenir shops very similar to those in Cilacap. An average mature green turtle sold for about US$50, a juvenile olive ridley between US$ 10-15. When asked who the buyers were the answer generally was “wealthy Indonesians from Jakarta, Bogor or Bandung”, indicating the rich urban elites.

This was all just an opportunistic observation and thus far we do not have any data on the size and extent of this specific trade. Obviously, despite the presence of comprehensive legislation in Indonesia by which all marine turtle species are officially protected, a significant domestic trade in stuffed sea turtles and turtle products exists also on the south coast of central-west Java as in many other places in Indonesia. We were not surprised by the presence of this trade, but we were surprised by the openness and by the location of the sales. Given the large variety of size classes of stuffed turtles of three species, and the large numbers for sale, the area must be a very important feeding ground for juvenile turtles and probably also for adult turtles. The importance of the nesting beaches at Nusa Kambangan may also be largely underestimated.

There are some monitoring and conservation projects on nesting beaches on Java’s south coast (e.g., on Pangumbahan, West Java and Sukamade, East Java) but apparently not in the Nusa Kambangan area; there are very little data available on marine turtles in this area. Qualitative and quantitative data on sea turtle occurrence and habitat use and the trade in stuffed turtles are urgently needed in the area, and, more importantly, serious law enforcement is required. Furthermore, as some of the vendors did not seem to know that this trade is forbidden, there may be a need for an awareness campaign targeting fishermen, shop owners, and buyers.

TOMASCIK, T., A.J. .MAH, A. NONTJI, & M.K. MOOSA. 1997. The ecology of the Indonesian seas, part two. Ecology of Indonesia Series pp. 1104-1131.

TURNER et al. 2000. Lonely Planet Indonesia. Lonely Planet Publications, Australia.