PETER CUNLIFFE-JONES, Kongho, Nigeria | Sunday
THE first time Iduate Enoch saw a turtle, he killed the beast and ate it. Now he goes out at night persuading others to let them live.
”It is a bit embarrassing,” says Enoch, a stalwart member of the Akassa Coast Conservation Initiative, or the Turtle Club as it is otherwise known here. ”I did not know any better at the time. Now though, I would not do it,” he adds.
Until around five years ago, few people outside the islands dotted along the mouth of Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region knew that rare and endangered turtles could be spotted on the coast here.
That was before the Turtle Club was born and started logging the sightings made by local fishermen like Enoch.
”We don’t have exact figures, but we know we have a lot of turtles. Fifteen to 20 nested just on this island last year and we have hundreds of islands in Nigeria,” said Robert Cole, the Turtle Club leader.
Among the turtles recorded here are the leatherback, green, olive ridley, and hawksbill.
”The leatherbacks are my favourites,” said Cole who admitted he has problems explaining to his wife why he gets up so often to go out at night looking for turtles coming out of the water to breed.
Leatherbacks are the largest turtles and can weigh up to 750 kilogram’s, ten times the weight of an average man, and grow to the size of a good kitchen table.
They can live for 25 to 30 years and lay between 80 and 100 eggs at a time. Unfortunately, many of the eggs fail to hatch.
According to ecologists studying the problem, crabs and other predators on the beach often attack the eggs. Also, they have started to find evidence of oil pollution affecting the animals’ breeding. ”Last year, we found the carcasses of several baby turtles born two-headed. We believe it is to do with oil pollution,” said one ecologist.
Internationally, concern is growing about ways to preserve the world population of turtles which migrate for thousands of miles before returning to their breeding ground once a year.
Nigeria, with its long coastline and thousands of miles of mangrove creeks, is a natural habitat, but this has suffered from pollution from the oil industry and now from over-fishing.
The recently-formed Turtle Club wants to attract foreign experts to study the country’s turtle population and set up a centre to help preserve and protect the turtles in Kongho, a settlement on an isolated island at the mouth of the Delta.
”We need funds and we need expertise. But it is not easy getting people to shell out for something like this,” Cole said.
”The fishermen used to catch and kill turtles,” added Bill Knight, a development worker on the island. ”The first one I saw was a huge beast in a very sorry state. They chopped it up and ate it.”
But now, the Turtle Club, backed by Knight’s development programme, is persuading the fishermen that, if they protect the turtles, it could attract eco-tourists to an area already known as the world’s largest mangrove swamp and a haven of rare birdlife, and this could mean money and work.
It could also help persuade the government to ban trawlers from coming in too close to shore and taking the fish sought by the local fishermen.
”Our motto is that the turtle is the fisherman’s friend,” said Cole, with a smile.
The new symbol of the community development programme run on the island is also a turtle. And that turtle appears to be smiling too. – AFP