Turning the Tide

A significant review of the exploitation, trade and management of SPAW-listed marine turtles published by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring programme of WWF and IUCN.

The report "Turning the Tide", available at http://www.traffic.org/content/952.pdf, indicates that high levels of exploitation in legal fisheries, and through illegal take and trade, continue to pose a threat to the marine turtles of the Wider Caribbean region. The report was commissioned by the Secretariat of CITES and released at the recently concluded CITES Conference of Parties in The Hague.  While documenting major advancements in marine turtle research and conservation in recent years, the report finds that legal but largely unmanaged marine turtle exploitation persists in over half of the 26 Wider Caribbean countries and territories surveyed. Despite challenges associated with inadequate restrictions on exploitation and a lack of systematic monitoring of the number of turtles killed each year, the report finds hope in the region’s many pioneering initiatives. Specific recommendations in the report include: the establishment of scientifically-based limits on the exploitation of marine turtles; comprehensive surveys to quantify exploitation; monitoring and awareness programmes; a more coherent legal framework; and better national and regional law enforcement.  The assessment is the latest of a series of technical reviews associated with the CITES Caribbean Hawksbill Turtle Range State Dialogue Meetings ( http://www.cites.org/eng/prog/hbt.shtml); a similar assessment of northern Caribbean countries was published by TRAFFIC in 2001 (http://www.traffic.org/seaturtles/).