California Coast & Ocean

This year more than 300 people gathered in Loreto’s auditorium, which is also the municipal gym, to listen to researchers talk about their work. Videos and community presentations were assigned to places in Loreto’s central plaza, by the cathedral. There, in a relaxed atmosphere, people could easily approach each other to discuss and ask questions about their work. Simultaneously, the Third Annual Meeting of Children of the Californias for Sea Turtle Conservation was set up a few yards away from the auditorium. The young participants were mostly from Loreto and Bahía de los Ángeles, and under the enthusiastic lead of Graciela Tiburcio and Sergio Román, they engaged in arts-and-crafts workshops, theater, and other activities.

The increasing number of monitoring teams and communities wanting to show their results had led the meeting’s organizers to conceive different strategies to give everyone a chance to speak up. Neither community groups nor children, however, had the opportunity to present their work in the auditorium, as they had done in the past, and many were disappointed by that.

On the main stage, researchers from Instituto Politécnico Nacional (the National Polytechnic Institute) in Mexico City discussed recent studies that showed a link between human leukemia and sea turtle consumption; researchers from Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste (the Center for Biological Research of the Northwest), in La Paz, presented work on the concentration of heavy metals in green sea turtles of the Pacific. Among the many other presenters were guests from Japan and Russia. Four workshops allowed participants to explore issues related to monitoring, data collection, and standardized methods for sea turtle research.

While scientific information is important for conservation, many meeting participants could not help but notice the disappointment of some community members who had traveled long distances with the expectation of an opportunity to present their work. At the debriefing session held at the end of the event, a number of them spoke of a need to reconsider the scope and goals of the Encuentro.

As happens with many successful projects, the Encuentro Tortuguero has come to a crossroads. The organizers are pondering: should they take advantage of the momentum and potential to turn it into a worldwide event where scientists and professionals can gather, or should the event go back to its origins and remain focused on people working on the front line? This is not an easy decision, especially now, when Loreto has been proposed as the venue for the 27th International Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Conservation and Biology.

While hosting this international event can be an outstanding opportunity for Loreto and other communities in the region to meet scientists and receive international exposure, changing the scope and vision of the Encuentro Tortuguero brings the possibility of neglecting the very valuable local human capital that is the key component for preserving sea turtles and the coastal ecosystems they thrive in.

Aída Navarro Barnetche, wildlife conservation program manager for WiLDCOAST/COSTASALVAjE, coordinates community-based marine conservation and education programs throughout the Californias and Latin America.