World Status, Exploitation and Trade - WIDECAST

BURMATable 30. Marine turtle eggs collected In Burma (Salter, 1983).1977-78 1978-79 1979-80 1980-81 1981-82 1982-83Thamihla Kyun 225815(Diamond Is)Thekethaung to no dataIrrawaddy R.Kaingthaung Kyun no data(Leilcthaung)Kadonlay Kyun no data237570 152929 165159 188000 no data94214 19690 22465 52312 no data170000 160000 180000 170000 190000120000 120800 123000 125000 no dataGayedgy iKyunnodata30000 30200 32000 32500 no dataSouth Moscosnodata21000 29600 32000 35000 no dataThe extent of' subsistence hunting for adult turtles is not known, but about100 turtles a year are thought to be die in trawls operated by PPFC. Mostof these are eaten by the fishermen or marketed locally (Salter, 1983).Hunting methods Eggs are collected by licence holders from nestingbeaches the morning after they have been laid. There is some illegalcollection by villagers and fishermen (Salter, 1983).Historical trends Burma is one of the few countries for which there aregood historical data for the past levels of exploitation of turtles.Maxwell (1911) described how the collection of turtle eggs was conductedunder Government licence in the last half of the 19th century, and compiledstatistics for the collection of eggs on Diamond Island from 1883 to 1898.These are given in Table 31, and show that an annual average of 1 744 000eggs were collected over this period, excluding the incomplete years. Thereis no direct evidence for the level of exploitation prior to 1883 but Day(1869, cited in Maxwell, 1911) considered that the turtle banks were beingexhausted at that time. Maxwell (1911, but writing in 1898) concluded thatthe level of harvest had remained fairly constant at about two million eggsa year since at least 1870. He cited a fisherman, who had known the bank for"30 odd years", and who informed him that "the take was never more than twomillions, and generally about that number". The practice of egg collectionwas evidently well established at that time as the same fisherman's "fatherand grandfather before him have had the lease of the [egg collection onDiamond] island".Maxwell wondered at the apparently undiminished level of the harvest inspite of the fact that the great majority of the eggs were collected everyyear. Outside the rainy season, virtually every nest was destroyed, butafter a night of rain it was estimated that about five nests were missed. Atthat time there was a closed season for egg collection from 1 April to15 May, and Maxwell calculated that this period and the number of missednests allowed a total of 326 000 eggs to escape collection each year,equivalent to a harvest of 93.3% of the mean number laid. This, hesurmised, probably rightly, was insufficient to allow the nesting populationto replace itself, and concluded that it must be regularly supplemented byimmigration from breeding colonies elsewhere in the Bay of Bengal. As aresult, he inferred that the protection measures were having no effect andrecommended that the closed season should be abolished and that a harvest of115