JUNO BEACH, Florida (16 Sep 2005) -- Larry Wood's office sits about 100 yards east of the posh shops and investment banks that dot U.S. 1 in the wealthy north end of the county, and about 100 yards west of the Atlantic Ocean midway between reality and the deep blue sea. Wood, 38, is the curator at the Marinelife Center in Juno Beach a small marine research, hospital and rehabilitation center that would earn five stars if Zagat rated elementary school field trips. On any day the place is crawling with wide-eyed kids watching a green moray eel gobble up chunks of fish and squid. It is the turtles just outside the gift shop, though, that mesmerize the kids, so much so that they stand in silence as the sick and wounded creatures paddle around their private above-ground pools. With the sides of the pools standing about 3 feet, the average preschooler can see eye to eye with the bobbing turtles when they surface for a breath of air. "Hey, who does this one belong to?" Wood said, pointing to the little girl with big, round, guilty eyes. "She just had her hands in two pools. She won't be counting to 10 on those fingers if a turtle gets a hold of them." These are the turtles that Floridians know and love. The loggerheads and the greens that come and lay their eggs on local beaches. The turtles that we turn out the lights for. The turtles whose eggs are snatched by poachers for their illusory Viagra-esque properties. The turtles on our license plates. But it is a species that few landlubbers will ever see alive that preoccupies Wood. The hawksbill eretmochelys imbricata is a smaller, more exotic turtle with a bill like a hawk and an elegant shell responsible for introducing the phrase "tortoiseshell" to the lexicon of fashion and design. This is the turtle nearly hunted to extinction to make fans, hair combs, knife handles, decorative boxes, belt buckles, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, eyeglass frames, cigarette cases and delicate works of art. The hawksbill's shell is thin and flexible, streaked and marbled in amber, brown and yellow. This single species is the sole source of commercial tortoiseshell throughout the world and it is critically endangered, meaning it is about to become extinct. In Japan, hawksbill shell products, known as bekko, are coveted status symbols and the livelihood for craftsmen whose artistry dates back more than 1,000 years. Bekko hair combs are still an important part of the traditional Japanese wedding dress. Dwindling supplies have driven some businesses into bankruptcy, some businessmen to suicide and prices above $100 a pound. In Palm Beach County, the hawksbill is just another turtle on the reef. They come here not to nest, but to hang out, Wood believes. Our hawksbills are probably teenagers and our reefs are rich with the sponges they love to eat, making Palm Beach County a sort of turtle mall with a very, very large food court. "This is the most highly exploited of all sea turtles," said Wood. "As of yet there are no population studies of the hawksbill in the U.S." So, Wood designed his own study. Last year he applied for permits to tag the turtles and a grant from the money collected from Florida's turtle license plates. He received $8,500 and another $7,500 this year. With the money, Wood bought the equipment he needed to tag and test the turtles and pay for dive charters. To date, he's tagged 52 turtles. 'Touching dinosaurs' Wood has none of Jacques Cousteau's savoir-faire, and his dives are a few bubbles short of an episode of Sea Hunt. He is short, well built and has an extremely dry sense of humor. He is serious about his work. This is science, not adventure. "It's not like I'm out here rodeoing these turtles," Wood said. "It's not thrilling. It's not." On a recent Wednesday morning he waited outside (a local dive shop) with his assistant, Sarah Hopler, a 20-year-old incoming junior at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania who landed what could be the best summer internship ever. "There are going to be turtle people aboard so it should be a good dive," the guide tells divers as they filled out the dive registration forms. The divers looked bewildered: "Turtle people?" "Yeah, there are some researchers aboard today and they're going to be tagging turtles." "Cool," everyone agrees. Wood strolls down the dock to the dive boat. Nearly everyone on the dock knows him. "Hey Larry, how's it going?" "Hey Larry, what's up?" "Hey Larry, seen any good turtles lately?" After stowing his gear, Wood sits on the dock swinging his legs and eating a package of bright orange crackers and peanut butter. The good fortune of getting paid to do what you love dive and tag a critically endangered species is not lost on him. "Some days I have to wear these shirts with these things around the neck what are they called, collars?" he jokes. On board, he is all business. Of the 18 divers aboard, Wood and Hopler are determined to be the first in the water, giving themselves the maximum amount of time to find turtles. On the 30-minute ride out to the reef they the "turtle people" sit among the other divers and listen to the dive master's instructions. "If you see a turtle please signal and let us know," the dive master asks, showing the divers the turtle signal pinkie and thumb extended with middle fingers closed a shaka to surfers. "Here it means turtle," Wood said, making the hand signal. "In Hawaii it means hang loose." "And remember, there's a $100,000 fine for touching or harassing a sea turtle," the dive master concludes. "It's not really $100,000," Wood says under his breath. "But let's let them think that." Wood and Hopler both veteran divers are first in the water. Within seconds they disappear. Fifteen minutes later they're bobbing on the surface, treading water 50 yards from the boat. Wood cradles a turtle with a flipper in the air and Hopler makes the turtle signal. Captain Jake Ziegler maneuvers the boat, backing up to Wood and Hopler, and Wood hoists the turtle onto the transom. | | The next 30 minutes is a choreography of needles, tape measures, cameras and calipers all performed to the violent rocking of the boat. The seas have increased to 3-5 feet. Ashley MacDonald, a 15-year-old deckhand, helps hold down turtle No. 34 while Wood and Hopler quickly strip off their gear and grab their instruments. Wood unwinds a tailor's tape measure and spits out measurements. "Straight carapace length max 46.7 centimeters. Straight carapace width max, 36.7 centimeters... " Hopler bows over a clipboard, dripping and writing the measurements. Other divers return to the boat and watch. "Is the turtle really OK with this?" one diver asks, watching the squirming turtle. Wood affixes a tag to a pair of pliers and clamps hard, piercing each flipper. "Do you have pierced ears?" Wood asks the woman. "It hurts about that much." The turtle calms down as the boat lurches violently from side to side. Seasickness sets in. Some divers turn green and vomit. But Wood and Hopler adjust to the rocking with veteran sea legs and somehow find a vein on the turtle's neck. Wood slowly pushes a long needle and draws a vial of blood, then swabs with an alcohol wipe. He plants a rice-size identification chip similar to those used on house pets and the turtle is gently released off the back of the boat. "When people heard I was going to be diving and tagging sea turtles they were like, just amazed," Hopler said. Last summer she worked at the corporate offices of cellphone company in New Jersey. As an ecology major she needed to find an internship. She sent out e-mails to marine research organizations and Wood responded. There is no pay, but she dives for free twice a week and her professors are thrilled with her. Hopler's role is crucial. After Wood catches a turtle gently grabbing the side of the turtle's shell from above Hopler catches Wood. Because it takes two hands to catch a turtle, Wood cannot control his ascent to the surface. The best he can do is "aim" the turtle and hang on. Hopler becomes the navigator, making sure the turtle doesn't plunge to the bottom or race to the surface too quickly. She dumps air from Wood's buoyancy regulator and guides Wood and the turtle safely to the surface. "To interact that closely is this huge rush," Hopler said. "They just have this, like, old look in their eyes. It's just like touching dinosaurs." International shell game Like the dinosaurs before them, the hawksbill is on its way to extinction. All sea turtles are endangered but the hawksbill was recently designated "critically endangered," meaning it faces a "very high risk of extinction." Although found off the coast of 60 nations, from Egypt to Nicaragua to Vietnam, hawksbill populations have declined at least 80 percent in the last three generations of the reptile because of demand for tortoiseshell products. The average hawksbill shell yields about 1.7 pounds of bekko. Between 1970 and 1990 Japan imported 787 tons of raw bekko, representing more than 670,000 hawksbills. Most of those shells, called scutes, came from Cuba and Latin America. In January 1993 Japan banned the import of bekko, but craftsmen, organized as the Japan Bekko Association, survived by working from stockpiled shells. Those stockpiles are nearly exhausted. But a new source of bekko could emerge: Cuba. Although Cuba has signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, it exempted itself from trade in hawksbill shells. In 2002, at a meeting of signing CITES countries, Cuba proposed to sell its stockpile of nearly 7.6 tons of scutes harvested in the 1990s and allow an annual trade of 500 turtles. After a heated debate, the proposal was narrowly rejected. Cuba tried again in 2002 to sell off its stockpile but withdrew the request after another heated debate. Critics argued that the mere discussion of reopening international trade encourages poachers to continuing killing the hawksbills and stockpiling scutes in the hopes that someday they will be able to sell them when the market reopens. The main reason debate still rages over the trade of hawksbill scutes is because there is so little reliable data on hawksbill populations. That's where Wood's project comes in. As a researcher and a scientist Wood inherently knows why his work is important. "Studying populations is a very standard part of biology," Wood said "The more we understand the biology of any organism or ecology the better we manage them." For Wood, the most interesting aspect of his research will be finding out whether the DNA from the blood samples shows that the turtles are related or from "different genetic populations." That data will go into an international database of turtle DNA. Still, trying to explain to a taxpayer who will never get closer to the ocean than the Publix fish counter that his research is important is daunting. There is the whole Disney "Circle-of-Life" argument that if the hawksbills die, then the fish die, then the reefs will die, then the local commercial dive and sport fishing industries will go under, and so on. On the ride back to the docks, with data from two new turtles, Wood and Hopler relax on the bow of the boat and bounce topics back and forth: global warming; the state of the reefs; their favorite dive spot; pesticide runoff. And water. Why is so much research done on the wildlife of the inland waters? Wood wonders. Why can't we be just as concerned about what's in the ocean? "We know about every nose hair on a snook... " Wood says, staring at the horizon. |
