Four volcanoes watched over us like sentries as we ate
dinner on a covered dock which doubles as a waterfront dining area in the town
of La Pirraya on an island in Jiquilisco Bay, El Salvador’s largest wetland. Our
tour group of Americans sat out over the water watching the sunset and the
fishing boats return with the day’s catch. Later huge bolts of lighting streak
across the sky in the distance as the gentle waves slapped against the wooden
posts of the dock. Nobody was on their smart phone, no car horns blared.
Jiquilisco Bay in many ways is an idyllic place. This bay,
which includes mangrove forests, seagrass beds, many islands, and more is not
only a place of great natural beauty; it’s a working landscape, providing
sustenance and livelihoods for thousands of people. Industries that are based
on the Bay and its forests include fishing, transportation, firewood
collection, and tourism. Managing the Bay’s resources and ensuring that there
is enough for everyone is a big job, too big for any single government agency
or community organization.
During a weeklong tour I led in July 2013 to explore
El Salvador, our group saw first hand how a coalition of
community development and conservation groups are taking the lead in conserving
this bay, protecting its wildlife, and reducing the environmental impact
of fishing. We learned about the many threats to the bay’s ecosystem and
visited projects run by local residents to make sure that the bounty of the bay
can sustain both its human inhabitants as well as its wild ones.
One sunny morning, our group boarded two “pangas”, the
fiberglass boats that are the primary form of transportation around Jiquilisco.
We headed out to explore the mangroves that are critical to the health of the
Bay by providing habitat for birds and wildlife and a place for fish to
reproduce. After years of degradation from fishing, agricultural pollution, and
aquaculture projects, the mangrove is now growing again due to restoration
efforts.
The main focus of our visit was to see and learn about sea
turtles, of which 4 species live in and around this area, the hawksbill, green,
leatherback and olive ridley turtles. After our boat tour, we headed to the
town of Isla de Mendez to visit a sea turtle hatchery where eggs of olive
ridley turtles are protected by Asociacion Mangle (a leading community-based
development organization). While learning about this hopeful program, we
received bad news.
Chema, our genial guide who works with our host organization
EcoViva, shared the bad news with me. He got a call from one of his fishermen
friends who spotted a dead hawksbill turtle near the edge of the nearby
mangrove wetlands. A small group of us headed out by boat to retrieve the
turtle and take it with us to hand it off to the staff of the Eastern PacificHawksbill Initiative (known by its acronym ICAPO), a conservation organization
that is a partner of SEE Turtles.
Though the turtle was too decomposed to determine a cause of
death, our partners were reasonably certain the culprit was fishing. The
biggest threat to the hawksbills in the bay is blast fishing, where a
combination of household chemicals are combined into a homemade bomb that kills
everything in its wake. More than 20 hawksbills, many of which were adult
females, have died from blast fishing in the past five years (fewer than 500 adult
female hawksbills are estimated to exist in the entire region). Other types of
fishing also impact turtles, including nets that entangle turtles and keep them
from reaching the surface to breathe.
One of the primary areas of focus for Asociacion Mangle and
EcoViva is promoting “pesca limpia” (“clean fishing” in English) where they
promote hook and line fishing, which helps to reduce the number of turtles and
other animals that are caught. This program helps to set up artificial reefs
for fishermen that are monitored to make sure everyone follows regulations to
ensure there are enough fish for everyone. Many former blast fishermen now
participate in this program, which has helped to reduce the impact of
explosives on certain areas of the Bay.
Fishing is just one of the threats to sea turtles in this
area. ICAPO, EcoViva, and Asociacion Mangle also work to protect sea turtle
nests by purchasing the eggs from local residents who formerly sold the eggs
for consumption. Since consuming eggs (and other turtle products like meat) was
banned in 2009, a network of hatcheries across the country has grown to receive
the eggs, where they are protected until hatching. Among local conservation
organizations, more than 1 million hatchlings have been released to the ocean
to date.
Another risk to hawksbill survival is the commercial
development of nesting beaches in the Bay. El Salvador is in line to receive a
large influx of funding for economic development from the Millennium Challenge
Corporation, a US entity that handles some of our foreign aid. Local
organizations are worried that coastal land critical to sea turtles and the
maintenance of local livelihoods in the Bay may be the focus of large tourism
developments. EcoViva has brought local residents to Washington DC to make sure
that community leaders are involved in big decisions that will affect the area.
We visited one of these beaches at sunrise one morning. Our
group was based in the town of La Pirraya, where ICAPO’s field operation is
located. A knock came early on our door, alerting us that a hawksbill had been
found by one of the local tortugueros (i.e. egg collector). We quickly dressed
and hopped in the boat to head to the beach on the other side of the Bay. With
the orange sunrise providing the entertainment, we arrived at the beach as the
research team collected tissue samples and basic info such as length and width
of the turtle’s shell. The researchers sent the female hawksbill on its way
with brand new tags on its flippers.
After breakfast, our group set out to explore this
fascinating bay. Winding through narrow channels, we saw some of the largest
mangrove trees I’ve ever seen, some topping 50 feet tall. In addition to
turtles, the Bay has 5 species of mangrove, more than 50 species of birds, and hundreds
more species of fish and other animals. Our group’s bird enthusiast rattled off
the avian species we saw including egrets, herons, and many more. After a stop
off at ICAPO’s hawksbill hatchery and a round of coconut water, we hopped in
the water to float on the outgoing tide.
Our main course of turtle watching came later that morning
as we piled again into the pangas to look for black turtles (a sub-species of
green turtle) that forage on seagrass in the Bay. Heading to a calm area near
the peninsula that encloses most of the Bay, our group fell quiet as we looked
for the small reptilian heads popping out of the water to take a breath.
It wasn’t long before the first turtle was spotted and ICAPO’s local field staff sprung into action,
encircling the turtle with a large fishing net so the research team could bring
it into the boat. Once the turtle was in the net, we motored the boat around
the edge of the net until we found the big male. Neftali, the ever-smiling
local coordinator for ICAPO hopped in the water and I followed behind, helping
free the turtle from the net and passing it to our colleagues waiting in the
boat.
These black turtles remain a mystery here in Jiquilisco; few
nest here and researchers don’t yet know how many are around. Though most of
the turtles they find are untagged juveniles and adults, once a turtle was
found with tags from the Galapagos, so ICAPO staff suspect they migrate from
the Ecuadorean islands here to feed and grow. The male we found was the first
of several we would spot that day. Several of our group had the opportunity to
help collect the data and release the turtles back into the water, a highlight
of the trip for several people.
The following day, as our group took its final boat ride
across Jiquilisco Bay to the port town of Puerto Parada, I enjoyed in the
tranquil views and the calm that comes after unplugging for several days. At
more than 150,000 acres, the Bay seems immense but with tens of thousands of
people using it every day and depending on it for survival, grassroots efforts
to protect its resources are more important than ever.
Read the first two parts of the series:
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