For years, the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council has sought to obtain permission from the federal government to authorize the killing of green sea turtles (honu, in Hawaiian) for cultural purposes. The turtles around the Hawaiian archipelago are classified as a Distinct Population Segment (DPS) under the Endangered Species Act, and their status is threatened.
The fact that the turtle is listed as a DPS with its status as threatened sets it apart from other green sea turtle populations in the Pacific and elsewhere. And that fact is itself a result of a petition to delist it that was directed a decade ago by council executive director Kitty Simonds in her capacity as head of the Maunalua Hawaiian Civic Club.
At the council’s December meeting, the push to kill green turtles in the name of preserving Hawaiian culture was on full display once again.
Late on the third day of the meeting, council staffer Josh DeMello gave a synopsis of what was described as a cultural take feasibility study, prepared by Wespac staff. DeMello stated that the study had been provided to council members, but it was not available to the public.
In several power-point slides that gave a synopsis of the study, DeMello stated that the study’s purpose was to analyze “the regulatory and policy pathways that could afford a cultural take of green sea turtles in order to determine the council’s options for potential green turtle management.”
The United States, DeMello said, was party to the Interamerican Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles (IAC), a treaty that is intended to prevent the capture and trade of sea turtles. “Under this convention,”
he continued, “there’s a way for each party to allow an exception for satisfying the economic subsistence needs of traditional communities.” To be granted such an exception, the governing body would have to establish a management plan, including take limits, that was consistent with the convention as a whole. “Those are the international actions we’re looking at now,” he said.
Simonds then took the floor. The staff sent the feasibility study to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s headquarters and also to Michael Tosatto, head of the National Marine Service’s Pacific Islands Regional Office, for their review and comment, she said.
Then, she said, “we learned that Dave Hogan was available to speak to the council about the IAC and answer some of the questions.”
Hogan, with the State Department’s Office of Marine Conservation, proceeded to explain why such an exception was not possible for the kind of cultural take proposed by the council.
The sea turtle convention, he said, “is designed specifically to conserve and protect sea turtles. … The negotiating dynamic at the time was specific to coastal communities in Latin and Central America who directly harvested turtles primarily during nesting, taking turtles and eggs.”
The development of the procedure to allow take for subsistence reasons “was specific to economic subsistence for food and nutrition for coastal communities,” he said. “The consideration of the federal government at that time was that the agreement would rely on and link with U.S. domestic regulations and laws regarding sea turtles at that time. … Generally, if take is prohibited by the Endangered Species Act, it would not be possible for the United States as a matter of policy to advance a request for an exception.”
In any event, any action under the IAC would have no effect on the status of turtles under the Endangered Species Act, he said.
In their initial questioning of Hogan, council members seemed not to understand what he was saying. McGrew Rice suggested that the Big Island fishing community of Miloli‘i, whose population is almost entirely Native Hawaiian, could include turtle takes in the community based fishery management plan.
David Sakoda, sitting in for Suzanne Case as the council representative for the state of Hawai‘i, noted that the plan did not include any take of turtles.
Guam council member Monique Amani said she was “super-interested in this. I like the direction it’s going for sure. The [Guam] Department of Agriculture is working on enforcement. This is definitely feasible.”
Chesla Muña-Brecht, the designated official for the Guam government, asked Hogan if the IAC would move forward with considering an exception “if they’re presented with a substantive request to consider an exception from the Endangered Species Act for Hawai‘i and/or Guam?”
Hogan repeated that the only excep- tions are for economic subsistence – “to eat. There’s no exception available for cultural take. So there’s a distinction there. Also, there is no way that the IAC can affect an ESA listing. They are two separate legal regimes. The ESA status existed at the time we negotiated the IAC. The prohibition of direct take of turtles under the ESA is the primary domestic legal barrier to taking turtles in Hawai‘i. We could not proceed with any action of the IAC if green turtle takes are prohibited under the Endangered Species Act.”
Finally, he added, “Even as a hypothetical situation, if there was an action under the ESA to allow for green sea turtle take, that does not automatically mean that the federal government would put forward a request under the IAC – primarily because we could only proceed [at the IAC] because of economic subsistence, and not cultural take.”
Simonds then asked, “If our honu was removed from the threatened list, then where would we be in terms of IAC and management of turtles?”
“If there was a change under the ESA,” Hogan replied, “the IAC would still remain as it is right now with regard to the international obligation of the United States to prohibit the direct take of sea turtles.”
Any petition from Hawai‘i stakeholders to seek an exception would need to show that it was for purposes of economic subsistence, but even then, Hogan said, the federal government “might not move the petition forward because there might be little chance of success … since it would contradict the position we took in negotiations and what we told the Senate.”
Simonds persisted. “If it was taken off the threatened list … the United States could take it on if it wanted to. Because we have our own population. The honu is a distinct population segment. They don’t go anywhere else. They stay here. You’ve answered my question, but it’s not what I wanted to hear,” she said.
But, Simonds said, at the time the treaty was subject to ratification, “the U.S. could have actually gone in and maybe did some exceptions, right? They could have actually not agreed to the whole thing, or what? What would’ve helped us – or nothing – when the Senate ratified the convention?”
“When the Senate provides advice and consent,” Hogan replied, “the agreement is limited at that moment. It would be very rare that the United States would decline to ratify an agreement and go back and reopen things. In this case, we were the initiators of the convention. We pressed very hard to negotiate it. The outcome was one that satisfied our political and international relations at the time, which exported our bycatch reduction policies, particularly for bycatch trawling.”
Tosatto, the regional NMFS admin- istrator, weighed in. “The status of the honu in Hawai‘i, being threatened, is different from the status in Guam and the CNMI. No options are there even to pursue a take under section 4D.” (Section 4D of the Endangered Species Act allows some take of threatened species so long as it does not interfere with its survival and recovery. While green sea turtles are listed as threatened in Hawai‘i, they are listed as endangered in Guam and the Mariana Islands.)
Under the IAC, exceptions are granted when necessary for economic subsistence, and, Tosatto added, “this is a very high bar, because they have not been consumed for a number of years.” Communities in Hawai‘i are looking “for a more cultural use that’s not one of economic subsistence.”
Sakoda noted that there seems to be “growing recognition of indigenous rights at the international level. Is there a process to renegotiate the terms of the IAC to include cultural take?”
“Anything is possible,” Hogan replied, but this would require renegotiating the treaty, “and that would also allow other parties to introduce provisions that we may not like. … We would also have to have ratification by all of the existing parties. So it’s not necessarily something we could undertake easily or lightly, even if there was an interest in doing so.”
In any case, he added, “that would be proscribed so long as there is the Endangered Species Act prohibition on direct take.”
Despite the discouraging message from Hogan, the council approved a motion directing its staff to “send a letter requesting the Biden administration pursue an avenue to recognize indigenous cultural harvest of Hawai‘i green turtles within the IAC.”
Meanwhile, at French Frigate Shoals
The beaches of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands – primarily those at the French Frigate Shoals – are critical nesting grounds for the Hawaiian green sea turtle. Most years, the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center conducts surveys at FFS to see how the turtles and monk seals are doing.
The report that PIFSC prepared for the December council meeting indicated that the turtle count in 2021 exceeded censuses in recent years. “The Lalo [French Frigate Shoals] turtle team identified more than 1,000 individual turtles on Tern Island, including 679 females. The average number of females on Tern Island was only 254 over the past three seasons,” the report noted.
Mike Seki, head of PIFSC, noted during the meeting of the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee that the increases “are not as robust as what we’ve seen in the past.”
The PIFSC report mentioned challenges to turtle recovery at Tern Island. “Across the atoll, East Island still recovers after being washed away by Hurricane Walaka in 2018,” it stated. In addition, “aging infrastructure from World War II often poses entrapment threats to wildlife.” In 2021, the PIFSC team “documented 344 turtles, 2 [monk] seals, and 10 seabirds that were entrapped or otherwise unable to get back to the ocean, and released 329 turtles, 1 seal, and all 10 seabirds (11 turtles and 1 seal got out on their own and 4 turtles died).”
Seki also mentioned marine debris, which can entangle wildlife. “We just had a marine debris team up there,” he said. “The amount of debris – it’s a real eye-opener.”
A Chemical Threat
Were the threat from potential cultural takes, loss of habitat, entrapment, and marine debris not enough for the sea turtles, last year scientists revealed yet another post-industrial challenge: PFASs, or perfluorinated alkyl substances. (The study, “Sea turtles across the North Pacific are exposed to perfluoroalkyl substances,” was published last year in the journal Environmental Pollution. The research was led by the lab of Jennifer M. Lynch of Hawai‘i Pacific University’s Center for Marine Debris Research.)
PFASs make up a family of chemicals that have been, since the 1950s, in widespread use in a number of consumer products and industrial processes. They are “nearly non-biodegradable,” the authors write, being formed by strong chains of fluorinated carbons. This bond “is incredibly stable, which gives PFASs extreme persistence and both hydrophobic and lipophobic properties” – that is, they are not soluble in either water or oil. One widely used application for PFASs is in foams used to fight fires at military bases and airports.
PFASs are known to have toxic effects in wildlife and humans, and starting in 2001, manufacturers in the United States began phasing out their production. Effects on reptiles are not known.
Reviewing concentrations of PFASs in eggs and turtle plasma from samples obtained in Hawai‘i, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palmyra Atoll, the authors determined that offloading of PFASs from female materials to eggs is strongest in the first clutch of the season and that “egg concentrations were highest in nests laid nearest international airports.”
They hypothesize also that the higher concentrations found in hawksbill turtles are a result of their feeding higher in the food chain than green turtles. In addition, two contaminants of the particular PFASs chemicals – PFUnA and PFTriA – “were related to reduced emergence success of hatchlings.” These levels in hawksbill eggs “are concerningly near concentrations causing developmental toxicity in birds.”
The study considered also whether concentrations of PFASs might be connected to fibropapilloma disease among green turtles. However, they concluded, “[p]revalence and severity of FP did not relate to PFAS concentrations, so the search continues for environmental stressors that may contribute to this viral disease.”
— Patricia Tummons
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