Marine Turtle Newsletter 5:4-5, © 1977
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Marine Turtle Newsletter 5:4-5, © 1977
(news release from the Defenders of Wildlife, 1244 19th Street NW Washington D.C. 20036, USA).
Five years ago the sun-washed Maldive Islands were a well-kept secret; today their booming tourist industry threatens to wipe out the Indian Ocean sea turtles, which are one of their attractions. The chain of tiny Islands that make up the Republic of Maldives is a tourist sight, with beaches, endless seas, and colorful underwater reefs for diving.
Now Maldivians are cashing in on the tourist potential of their islands, in an effort to diversify their economy, once dependent on fishing. This year 15,000 tourists from Europe, the Americas, Japan, and elsewhere will visit the Maldives. With the influx has come a large-scale revival of the ancient trade in sea turtles and tortoise-shell, according to Defenders, the magazine of Defenders of Wildlife.
Tortoise shell, traditionally obtained from the hawksbill sea turtle, has ranked among the world's luxury goods since earliest recorded times. In the l2th century, tortoise shell was the major export of the Maldives, writes anthropologist Elizabeth Overton Colton in the June Defenders. Ms. Colton is in the Maldives to study the impact of tourism on the islands' economy.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora ranks sea turtles as endangered species, threatened with extinction. Yet the Maldivian laws protect the tourist industry, not the turtles, Defenders points out. The shopfronts of Male, capital of the Republic of Maldives, are filled with stuffed and empty turtle shells-many less than legal length. Island merchants say they are helpless intermediaries, caught between poor fishermen who earn up to $60 for a single empty turtle shell, and wealthy tourists, who are eager to buy a souvenir that will last longer than their new winter suntans.
Existing curbs on the turtle trade don't seem to work very well. Many of the tourists come from nations that have signed the treaty protecting endangered species. Yet few tourists are made aware of the endangered status of sea turtles. And, while nearly one hundred airlines signed a 1974 World Wildlife Fund resolution against transporting endangered wildlife or wildlife products, many of the same airlines bear the shell-bearing tourists to and from the islands. For people of the Maldives, the tourist boom generates much-needed foreign exchange. But it can only be a short term venture, since the industry contains the seeds of its own destruction: the primary contributor to the extinction of some of the earth's oldest animals.