The Perils of Penyu: Ritual and Dietary Turtle Meat. Part
Four (Conclusion)
For countless generations, mature female sea turtles have
swum hundreds of kilometers to lay their eggs on the beach
where they were born at Perancak, a small fishing village
on the southwest coast of Bali near Negara. Perancak fishermen
have hunted, caught, and traded turtles for an equal number
of generations for religious offerings and for food (fishermen
normally earn Rp.50,000 per day selling “saté
penyu,” barbecued turtle meat) in an inexorable process
of poaching, predation, and extinction. Pulau Serangan (Turtle
Island) is a dry, low-lying three-kilometer-long island near
the entrance to Benoa harbour off the southeast coast of Bali.
Green sea turtles have traditionally been caught either in
the surrounding, shallow coastal waters or turned on their
backs when they come ashore on moonlit nights to lay eggs
in a shallow pit in the sand. They are initially kept alive
in bamboo pens or sheds on the sandy beach around Dukuh, the
island’s main village. Here, they are fattened up on
seagrass and fresh leaves destined for eventual sale and slaughter
at Pegok on the outskirts of Denpasar. Because of the robust
Balinese market for turtle meat, their flesh is distributed
to restaurants for steaks and saté, and to villages
to be transformed into lawar, a tartare, or raw meat ceremonial
specialty. (I was offered cooked turtle meat for lunch as
a guest in a local Serangan home during Kuningan.) Serangan’s
long-established, resident Islamic Buginese community from
South Sulawesi makes a living capturing and wholesaling the
turtles—as well as buying them from Muslim fishermen
from eastward islands and the Moluccas. They also supply green
turtles needed by the Balinese for ongoing, year-round, cyclical
festivals. (The Buginese do not eat turtle, themselves, as
Islam prohibits its followers from eating animals that live
in two worlds, water and land.)
The dwindling supply of Balinese turtles is supplemented by
wild turtles harvested and sourced throughout Indonesia. The
village of Tanjung Benoa is the epicenter of Bali’s
illegal, archipelago-wide, imported sea turtle trade: in the
late 1990s, as many as 27,000 turtles a year arrived at its
rudimentary port, awaiting either re-shipment to other remote
islands or slaughter in Bali. Thanks to lobbying by local
environmentalist groups like Profauna Indonesia (www.profauna.org)
and a consortium of international NGOs, stiff new anti-turtle
poaching regulations were enacted in 2003. Bali’s provincial
officials began to take high-profile (if sporadic) action
against the well-connected traders who supply the turtles
and turtle eggs openly on sale at Bali’s major markets.
As an example, on June 27, 2003, Bali’s Water Police
conducted a raid on a Madurese vessel, Wisata Bahari, anchored
in Benoa Harbor; they arrested five fishermen (each facing
five years’ imprisonment and a Rp.100 million fine)
and rescued 120 rare green turtles destined for the fish markets
at Tanjung Benoa and Jimbaran. Subsequent off-shore police
raids in Bali and East Kalimantan led to the seizure of hundreds
of poached green turtles from ships that had set sail from
Tanjung Benoa. Local police joined the campaign to enforce
national regulations prohibiting the trade in endangered green
turtles: on July 21, 2003, police swept through local markets
to arrest six turtle satay vendors who offered undercover
police officers fresh turtle meat kebabs. Subsequent interrogation,
however, revealed that the sellers were de-frauding customers
into paying high, “forbidden turtle delicacy”
retail prices for what was in fact a very ordinary skewer
of Balinese-raised beef!
In May 2006, seven large green turtles were poached from the
southern coast of East Java near Banyuwangi. They were en
route to Tanjung Benoa to be slaughtered when the boat, the
MV Isna Jaya, was intercepted by Bali’s marine police.
The largest of the turtles—with a carapace measuring
111cm.--was over fifty years old. These lucky victims were
confiscated by the Department of Nature Conservancy Bali,
tagged, and returned to the sea. Profauna’s Bali office
estimates that an unsustainable level of 3,000-5,000 green
turtles are still poached and smuggled annually into Bali:
between 2004 and 2006, twelve motor vessels were caught transporting
populations of these gentle reptiles into the island of the
gods. The hard-won legislation, enforcement, (and negative
publicity), triggered an angry response from Tanjung Benoa:
its religious leaders actively protested against the turtle
protection crusade—while the poachers-hunters merely
regrouped and took the prosperous, flourishing trade—and
the killing--deeper underground. Local turtle trade bosses
continue to illegally capture turtles, overloaded death ships
still arrive with hundreds of condemned turtles, merchants
sell illicit turtle meat and by-products, and a Tanjung Benoa
turtle slaughterhouse persists in killing members of an endangered
species in contravention of the law.
Setbacks continue, but multi-pronged conservationist initiatives
have registered substantial successes: many more turtles are
being rescued from their previous, traditional fate as food.
In the past, turtles could always be obtained at the market--or
ordered for deliveries--but today it is a little more difficult
to get them. The traders are aware that it is illegal, and
whenever boats with turtles arrive, they want to offload and
sell them as quickly as possible. (Turtles may be unavailable
for one or even two weeks, but then a few boats sneak in--land
their cargo without the interference of the harbor police--and
one hundred are available in one day.) There are also encouraging
indications that Bali’s endangered olive ridley and
green sea turtles are returning to nest on the highly touristed,
southwestern coastal beaches (Jimbaran, Kedonganan, Kuta Legian,
Seminyak, Padma Beach, Petitenget, Canggu, and Batubelig),
as well as in Sanur and Nusa Dua. A notice board posted on
Kuta Beach by the Pos Satgas Pantai Kuta (Kuta Beach Security)
proudly lists all of Bali’s turtle species as endangered
and officially protected under law. The most important accomplishment
of the public information campaign is growing Balinese goodwill
and active, sympathetic intervention: beachside villagers
are now stepping in to rescue and protect these endangered,
stranded, lonely wanderers of the ocean. Turtles will only
gain permanent shelter from this tragic human consumption
storm through the active, engaged support, involvement, and
cooperation of the Balinese population—buttressed by
effective, consistent, and persistent law enforcement.
