The Seri, sea turtles and cleavage.

AuthorLaDuke, Winona
PositionBiodevastation

Standing at the bow of the boat, Ramon Lopez, an elderly Seri man, watches the horizon, the color of the sea and the islands, just as his ancestors have for a millennium. The boat travels through schools of fish, flocks of pelicans, mangrove estuaries and an endless aqua green sea punctuated only by immense mountains on the ocean and land's horizon. It's on the poorly named "Sea of Cortez" that an indigenous community of Seri people brings traditional scientific knowledge to bear in the restoration of their most sacred relative--the sea turtle.

At the opposite end of the social spectrum, a scantily clad model urges the same message: Protect the turtles and the turtle eggs.

As pelicans and osprey swoop down to catch their morning meal, Ramon sings a song to the turtles, bringing them in. The Seri, or Comcaac, people have a creation story that links them to many other indigenous peoples of the North--after a great flood, the turtle went to the bottom of the water and brought up earth to make the land new again. These same people, who possess traditional ecological knowledge of thousands of years on the Gulf of California, are today an important part of work to restore the sea turtles and, in that process, strengthen their own community.

Hunted originally for meat, then shells, sea turtles have become increasingly endangered as men, apparently in need of more sexual prowess, purchase turtle eggs as a sexual stimulant and aphrodisiac.

The drive to "get it up"

Beaches in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero are nesting habitats for 7 of the world's 8 sea turtle species, and all of them are in danger of extinction. Banning the hunting, sale and consumption of turtle eggs and by-products in 1990, the Mexican government has launched an extensive campaign to protect sea turtles, although turtle habitat remains endangered. An estimated 90% of their nesting habitat has been destroyed for beach-side development like condominiums and hotels, largely for North Americans.

The drive to "get it up," however, continues to decimate the turtle population. Some 80 sea turtles were bludgeoned and butchered alive in one single massacre in August 2005 on the Guerrero coast. As many as 100 eggs can be removed from a dead female. On another stretch of Guerrero's coast near Petatlan, at least 100,000 eggs have disappeared this nesting season.

A new, highly visible and controversial campaign to challenge sea turtle eggs as aphrodisiac is being led by...

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