World Status, Exploitation and Trade - WIDECAST

MALAYSIAWEST MALAYSIAPOPULATION:Chelonla mydaaNesting sites Some nesting occurs on both west (Malacca Straits) andeast (South China Sea) coasts, but is very sparse in the west.Turtle nesting is rare on the mainland west coast. This is presumably inpart because the coast has few suitable sand beaches, consisting mainly ofmudflats and mangroves. Tanjong Kllng (west of Melaka town) was used byC. mydas in 1975, but the beach is now unsuitable for turtles; the nearbyislands Pulau Besar and P. Upeh may still be used. Similarly, PangkorIsland, Pulau Sembilan, and a few other islands off the Peralc coast, alsoP. Pinang and P. Langlcawi further north, now have only sporadic turtlenesting (Slow and Moll, 1982). The only substantial remaining mainlandnesting site is Pasir Panjang Beach, near Pantai Remis, Perak, but this issubject to very heavy egg collection (Moll, 1987).Turtles, including C. mydas , still nest at many sites on the east coast.Numbers are highest by far in Terengganu State, significant numbers also useTioman Island, off the Pahang coast. Pulau Perhentian and P. Redang (twoIslands off the coast of northern Terengganu) and the mainland along theTerengganu-Pahang border, are the main nest sites (Leong and Slow, 1984).In 1984, Pulau Perhentian and Pulau Redang accounted for 63% of the nests ofC. mydas in the whole state (Abdul Rahman B. Kassim in 11 tt , 4 October1986).Nesting numbers Very little direct information Is available on nestingnumbers, but egg collection data from licensed egg collectors allow anindirect approximation to be made. Although egg harvest is thought to beclose to 100% throughout Malaysia (Chan Eng-Heng In litt , 8 October 1986),the collection figures are unlikely to be consistently reliable (for reasonsoutlined by Slow and Moll, 1982: 342). In Table 124, the egg yield dataprovided by Slow and Moll are given, with an estimate of annual femalenesting numbers (assuming that each will lay, on average, three clutches of100 eggs)Table 125 Includes recent more detailed information on harvest In Terengganu(Abdul Rahman B. Kassim in litt. , 4 October 1986). Within Terengganu, eggyield data assembled by Siti and de Silva (1985, unpublished) are shown inTable 126. These cover some two-thirds of the total mainland coast, namelythe 130 km between Chukal in the south and Rantau Abang.The available data Indicate that Terengganu is by far the most importantarea for C. mydas nesting, and within the state, the two northern islands,Pulau Perhentian and P. Redang hold around two-thirds of the total nesting(the remaining one-third being spread diffusely over much of the mainlandcoast). At Pantai Pasir Panjang on the west coast, Lee (1987) reported thatonly 30 turtles had nested between March and June 1987, compared with 270 Inthe same period in 1986. About 80% of these were thought to be C. mydas .Trends in nesting numbers Slow and Moll (1982) compared results of asurvey of egg yields on the east coast, performed in 1978, with results of asimilar survey performed in 1956 (Hendrlckson and Alfred, 1961). Thiscomparison suggested a severe decline, of about 43%, in C. mydas eggyields. Slow and Moll discussed the extent to which differing methodologiesmay have produced these results, but concluded that the indicated severe319