Stakes mark a sea turtle nest on Sand Key last week. Clearwater Marine Aquarium biologists monitor sea turtle nesting and mark the nests with stakes after sea turtles lay their eggs overnight. They then monitor the nests until the eggs hatch.

By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 17, 2002

INDIAN ROCKS BEACH -- Biologist Glenn Harman was patrolling the beach one morning this summer when he spotted it: A loggerhead turtle nest, bulging with 124 eggs the previous day, had been looted and filled with sand.

The poaching was a clean sweep -- the work of a human, not a raccoon or other natural predator.

Pinellas turtle watchers can recall only one other poaching in the past 25 years. But in other parts of Florida, sea turtle eggs, already fighting an uphill battle against beach erosion and coastal development, not to mention foxes and armadillos, are increasingly facing a threat from man.

Raw, boiled or mixed into a cocktail, the pingpong ball-sized eggs are considered aphrodisiacs in some Caribbean and Latin American countries. Wildlife investigators fear the creased influence of those cultures is making the eggs more popular in Florida.

Last month investigators arrested a man from Riviera Beach near West Palm Beach for possessing and selling an endangered species. Undercover agents bought a half-dozen eggs from the man, who had 341 more eggs in a stash at home. The eggs bring $2 to $3 each on the black market, usually about $30 a dozen, investigators say.

That kind of trade hasn't been seen locally, but some fear it could happen.

"Hopefully, there's not a growing black market here," said Harman, with the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

Capt. Jeff Ardelean, an investigator with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has followed egg poaching trends for 20 years, said he thinks the turtle egg market is bigger than in the past. Still, the agency, which monitors many other environmental crimes, makes only one or two arrests each year.

While stealing eggs is a felony that could involve a long stay in prison, selling eggs is only a misdemeanor, which carries a fine and some jail time. So egg dealers, trying to escape harsher punishment, often pay money-hungry drug addicts to steal the eggs for them.

"There's more crack on the street than eggs, but this is a seasonal thing, too," said Ardelean, referring to sea turtle season, which runs from May to October. "It's almost like Christmas. The chance to eat these eggs comes around once a year."

Catching egg poachers is tricky business. Investigators hide in the dunes or on top of beachfront condominiums, using night-vision binoculars to see poachers in the dark.

The missing eggs in Indian Rocks Beach, Ardelean guessed, were probably stolen by someone who wanted to use them personally.

"When they hit just one nest, it's maybe somebody from another country who's just getting them for themselves," said Ardelean, who is based in West Palm Beach. "It's still serious, but we know there's actually markets for them (in South Florida). I can't say there's a market over there on the West Coast. There's not enough poaching activity."

Ardelean says he is keeping an eye on Naples, the only other area on the West Coast of Florida where poaching has been reported this year. Three nests were looted in Naples, Ardelean said.

In South Florida communities like Riviera Beach, West Palm Beach, Boynton Beach and Miami's Little Havana, investigators have used informants and undercover agents to infiltrate the black market.

The eggs are stolen soon after a sea turtle makes its annual pilgrimage to the shore where it was born to lay the year's crop. They only keep for about a week, so they are stolen before they have a chance to bake in the sun, and dealers package them by the dozen in plastic sandwich bags and store them in the refrigerator.

They are sold from homes or through friends of friends. "In the old days, you could go to bars and get them, but they really have to know you to sell them to you," Ardelean said.

Sea turtles lay 70 to 130 eggs at a time, so if a dealer gets too many in stock, he might get lazy and head to a small streetside market, trying to sell his stash by word of mouth. Investigators once found a South Florida grandmother who went home to Nicaragua once a month, returning each time with a suitcase of eggs to sell at a Miami market.

The eggs are stirred into a beer, mixed with some rum in a shot glass, eaten raw and occasionally chased with a beer, or simply boiled.

"What they do is they boil them for about seven minutes," Ardelean said. "They don't hard boil like a chicken egg; they get a consistency like an oyster. They flavor them with red pepper and salt, then bite into the egg and suck the contents."

In addition to the eggs' popularity in Hispanic cultures, some enclaves of African-Americans communities along the South Florida beaches have eaten the eggs for generations.

"It's a cultural community that's been here for a long time, prior to the turtles being protected," Ardelean said. "We thought it would die out as the older people died. When I was in my 20s, I was arresting people in their 40s. Now I'm in my 40s arresting people in their 40s."

All marine turtle species that nest in Florida are either endangered or threatened. Generally, scientists agree the populations are increasing, though it's difficult to measure.

Sea turtle advocacy groups might work toward tougher laws against selling endangered species in Florida. After all, the turtles, which made 70,000 nests last year in Florida, are up against enough already.

Beachfront development diminishes nesting sites for turtles. When government pumps sand onto beaches to lure tourists and protect waterfront homes, nests are buried and the patterns of nesting turtles are disturbed. Artificial lighting along the beach can disorient adult and hatchling turtles, which are attracted to light.

"Threats to sea turtles are also increasing," said Gary Appelson, policy director for the Caribbean Conservation Corp., a Gainesville organization devoted to sea turtles. "What the prognosis is, long term, is anybody's guess."

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