Agnese Mancini: Project Update: November to December 2007

Study area. Communities have been divided into three profiles depending on the features of the sea turtle black market.

During the last two months very few carapaces have been found stranded on beaches or in dumpsites. With respect to the same period the past year (when we found more than 200 turtles), this is a really good news. We could then focus on interviews with fishermen and people from the community to trace a profile of all the communities we are visiting.

We conducted more then 150 interviews and could divide the communities into three profiles (see map
attached):
- red: communities where there still is a network of sea turtles hunters.These people are organized in solid networks and live of the earnings from this activity. Proper “Sea turtle hunters” have disappeared, most of these people are dedicated more generally to the illegal fishery;
- green: communities where there still is a developed local market. Mostof the fishers also catch sea turtles when they are asked for or during bad fishing seasons to have an extra-income. Sea turtles are sold only in the
community and are not exported;
- blue: communities where the market has disappeared but there still is local consumption. Sea turtles are caught to celebrate special events and are shared among friends and family.

This preliminary description is useful to give us an idea of what the problem really is in every community and allow us to implement specific conservation measures adapted to each community.