"It's a cycle that repeats itself year
after year," Estrades said.
According to the analysis carried out by
the Karumbé staff, the cause of death of the turtles is drowning, caused by
fishing activity. "The turtles are entangled in fishing nets and
drown," Estrades explained to El Observador.
Karumbé, which has a team of 20 volunteers,
arrives at the beaches when a tortoise dies and conducts a field study that
consists of "releasing the specimen (date, time and place), determining
the species, taking biometric measurements, taking Tissue samples, do an
internal study to determine sex and corroborate whether or not she was sexually
active.” Then the stomach is searched for plastics and water is seen in the
lungs. "That allows us to identify the cause of death," said
Estrades. Once all the samples are taken, the animal is buried in the sand.
Difficult solution
The director of the NGO was not very
optimistic to be able to find a solution and, although it identifies the
fishery as the main threat to the turtles, it emphasized the responsibility of
the Uruguayan fishing boats.
The problem, he said, is that it is
impossible to determine which type of fish is the one that most affects turtles
because it is not easy to know for sure how long the animal was drifting prior
to reaching the coast. That makes it difficult to identify the fishing boat
that causes the turtle to die.
"It's a difficult issue to stop and to
do that, we have to ban the fishery and that's something that obviously cannot
be done," Estrades told El Observador.
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