Marine turtle newsletter January 2009 : issue 123: Creating Community Collaborations;|Mixed stocks of Green turtles foraging on black reef|Northern ecology of Green turtles from Shoalwater Bay, Australia|Does Fiji's Turtle Moratorium Work?|Marine Turtle Hunting in the Ha'apai Group Tonga|Foraging Turtles around Tetepare Island, Solomon Islands

Abstract

Marine turtles are easy to love but difficult to manage. Their cultural importance connects them intrinsically to the Indigenous people of the region. They also have economic and ecological value to the non-indigenous population. For example, studies on tourism values on Australia's Great Barrier Reef revealed that each turtle is worth up to $1000 to dive tourists (Stoeckl & Birtles unpublished data). Turtle watching at Mon Repos, a loggerhead rookery in southern Queensland, is worth around $2 million annually to the local economy, as people flock to the seaside town to watch turtles lay eggs (Tisdell & Wilson 2005). Furthermore, there are many examples of turtles being used as symbols for exclusive resorts or flagship species for non-government organizations (e.g. Frazier 2005; Eckert & Hemphill 2005). However, because they are migratory, long lived species, exposed to multiple and compounding threats their management at ecologically and politically relevant scales can be problematic.