Born Free

Category: Sea Sense | Date: Jul 24 2008 | By: bornfree

Hi there, John here - 

On 15th July we trained 7 staff from 2 lodges on the coast south of Dar es Salaam. Both hotels share a small sandy beach where we get about 40 green turtle nests a year and where we have set up turtle tourism. During the training, we (me and Dot the Sea Sense Administrator) told them about the different turtle species and basic turtle biology and life history, what to do if a turtle nests on their beach, how to protect turtle nests and what to do when the nest hatches. We focused on guidelines on hatching viewing so as to avoid people stepping on and handling baby turtles as they make their way to the sea.

Following the training, we spent about 4 hours with the hotel staff, university students and local villagers digging a wire fence around the turtle nest area to stop predation by honey badgers and monitor lizards. About a third of nests are destroyed by these animals every year and we are trying a variety of different ways to try and stop them. Honey badgers are particularly bad because they have incredibly strong claws and can burrow their way through most things. I hope the wire works. I’m sure that this, together with extra vigilance provided by the hotels will reduce the number of nests lost each year.

Today we tried to have a meeting with the village (Amani Gomvu) to find out who slaughtered a nesting turtle a week ago. This is the first turtle that has been killed on the south coast since we started working there in 2004 and is a real blow to our efforts and our relationship with the local community. Unfortunately most of the village leaders were absent and those we did speak to said the people who killed the turtle were from another village! I hope we will succeed to get all the local communities in the area together next week.

We are also going to conduct some questionnaire interviews to find out more about the uses of turtle products (meat, oil, shells etc) and whether anyone who has eaten turtle meat has ever been ill. I think the results will be extremely interesting.