Clipboards vs. connections: the battle for Bioko's turtles

MORAKA BEACH, Equatorial Guinea

The gigantic leatherback turtle shoveled black sand backward to cover her freshly deposited eggs, then paused to catch her breath before resuming the task, fulfilling the ancient imperative to produce a new generation.

Epifanio Mualeri Biri gently approached the animal, which can weigh more than half a ton and whose powerful flippers can inflict a nasty blow. He extended a tape measure across the shell — 6 feet long and 3-1/2 feet wide.

To Mualeri, handling this magnificent creature is all in a night's work. He and 38 other residents of the south end of the island of Bioko in West Africa are employed to patrol the beaches after sundown during the seven-month nesting season to discourage poachers from hunting the endangered reptiles or their eggs.

Their work is part of the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program, run by Philadelphia-area biologist Gail Hearn. Although Hearn's primary goal is to save such endangered Bioko primates as the drill, a large monkey, she has adopted the cause of the sea turtles, as well.

4 endangered species Four of the world's endangered sea turtles nest on the beaches of Bioko. Sea-turtle populations are threatened by such things as poaching of their eggs; commercial use of other parts for oil and cosmetics; entanglement in commercial fishing lines and nets; ingestion of debris, especially plastic bags; and beach development and artificial lights, which thwart nesting. Without such dangers and other predators such as sharks, they can live to about 50 years. Atlantic Green Chelonia mydas Largest hard-shelled sea turtle. Carapace (top shell): 35 to 48 inches long Weight: 220 to 440 pounds; some as big as 600 pounds. Diet: Seaweed, green algae Habitat: In all tropical and subtropical oceans. In the United States, from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts. Leatherback Dermochelys coriacea Largest living turtle. Carapace: 62 inches long and, unlike other sea turtles, slightly flexible. Weight: 700 to 2,000 pounds Diet: Jellyfish Habitat: Warm seawaters of South America, Africa, Asia. In United States from Nova Scotia to Puerto Rico. Hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricata The most colorful sea turtle. Carapace: 30 to 35 inches Weight: 95 to 165 pounds Diet: Sponges Habitat: Tropical and subtropical seas of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Olive Ridley Lepidochelys olivacea Smallest of hard-shelled sea turtles, nesting on beaches in large aggregations. Carapace: 22 to 31 inches Weight: 77 to 100 pounds Diet: Omnivore diet of mollusks, fish, crabs and shrimp Habitat: Endangered in Mexico and threatened elsewhere, it lives along Pacific shores, West Africa and Indian Ocean. Sources: Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program; National Marine Fisheries Service; Caribbean Conservation Corp. and Sea Turtle Survival League

But his team of turtle protectors is armed with little more than clipboards, no match for hunters with powerful political connections. Though hunting is illegal in Equatorial Guinea, especially in the scientific reserve that includes this remote and uninhabited beach, hunters come bearing "credentials" that allow them to take the endangered turtles.

"We can't do anything," said Mualeri. "We simply ask to see their credential. We think it's bad because they're killing so many turtles." He said groups of poachers are often accompanied by a uniformed soldier.

Though the odds are stacked against them, the turtle guards believe their vigilance has made the 12 miles of beach they patrol safer for sea turtles. The number of nesting turtles has increased slightly in the eight years since the program began.

Hearn, a biology professor at Arcadia University in suburban Philadelphia, has led expeditions to Bioko for nine years to conduct an annual census of endangered primates.

She inherited the turtle project from a Spanish environmental organization that ran afoul of the Equatoguinean government for political reasons.

She and Wayne Morra, an Arcadia economics professor who helps her run the Bioko project, decided that saving turtles was an integral part of preserving the surrounding rainforest from poachers.

"The monkeys and sea turtles go together," said Hearn, who is visiting Bioko for three weeks with her annual expedition. "If Equatorial Guinea eventually wants to develop this for ecotourism, it's important to save the turtles, because people will pay to see that."

Hearn operates the turtle project on a shoestring budget — about $30,000 a year, funded by donations. She runs it as an educational project in conjunction with the National University of Equatorial Guinea and is careful not to confront the government, which tolerates few international groups in the country.

So for now the turtle project's ambitions are modest, a small part of a worldwide struggle to preserve marine turtles.

In the past, Hearn's expedition has tagged some turtles for long-term study; this year, however, the graduate students who usually lead the project were unable to participate.

The turtle project, as well as Arcadia's annual expedition, employs virtually the entire village of Ureca, the only inhabited place on Bioko's rain-drenched southern coast. Before the protection program began, the village received most of its livelihood from turtle hunting.

Mualeri and his guards patrol only a dozen miles of beaches, dispatching the data they collect to Hearn at the end of the year.

On a three-hour round-trip patrol of two miles of beach one recent night, Mualeri counted one leatherback turtle and one green turtle, plus hours-old nests of four other marine turtles. Mualeri said that count was typical for this time of year.

There were no signs of hunters, though there was evidence of a recently used hunting camp.

Though sea turtles have been thoroughly studied and are the subject of elaborate conservation projects in other parts of the world, much about their life cycle remains a mystery because they spend so little time on land.

There are eight species of marine turtles in the world, and four of them nest on Bioko's isolated beaches.

All marine turtles are considered endangered because they are so zealously hunted.

The leatherback — the largest sea turtle — and the green turtle have made Bioko their special domain because they prefer steep beaches where they can dig their nests above the high-tide line. The olive Ridley and hawksbill turtles are less frequent visitors, preferring coastal reefs.

Sea turtles mate in the water; a few days later, the female comes ashore, drags herself up the beach and digs a pit into which she deposits the fertilized eggs.

A leatherback will lay about 80 eggs in a clutch. Mualeri says it takes 72 to 90 days for them to hatch, depending on the sand's temperature.

After hatching en masse, the infant turtles make a mad dash for the sea, attempting to avoid predatory birds and fish. Only a few survive to adulthood.

Sea turtles live to 50 years or more. The adult females return to their native beaches after about 20 years to reproduce. They lay eggs every two or three years, though they will deposit several clutches in the years when they are fertile.

The eggs are easy targets for predators. Primates such as the drill sometimes feast on the eggs, as do people, preparing them as they do hens' eggs.

Hunters prey on the nesting turtles as well. While leatherbacks are too big and fatty to attract poachers, who cannot lift the 1,000-pound animals, the green turtles are especially vulnerable because they weigh only a few hundred pounds and their meat is considered tastier.

Hunters immobilize a turtle by flipping it on its back, causing the weight of its internal organs to compress its lungs. The metabolism of the cold-blooded animals slows down, and they go dormant, allowing poachers to load them into canoes and haul them to market.

The slaughter by commercial hunters grieves Mualeri, who has come to appreciate the values of conservation.

"If you had a chicken farm and protected all the eggs they laid, you would have more chickens," he said. "But if you eat all the eggs, you have none."