Raising Indigenous community awareness and promoting on-ground recovery activities for marine turtles and dugongs in Torres Strait (T4.3, T4.3a)

Task leaders: Prof Helene Marsh and Dr Mark Hamann, James Cook University.

The six species of sea turtles that occur in Australian waters are listed as threatened by the IUCN Red List 2003, the Australian Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and the Queensland Nature Conservation Act 1992. Dugongs are listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List 2003 and the Queensland Nature Conservation Act 1992. The Indigenous fisheries for turtles and dugongs are listedas Article 22 fisheries under the Torres Strait Treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Australia has international obligations to protect both indigenous cultural values and these species under various international conventions as well as national laws.

The meat component of the harvest is concentrated on green turtles and dugongs. The egg harvest targets several species, including the hawksbill turtle that is listed as critically endangered by the IUCN Red List in 2003.

All these species are variously impacted by a broad suite of anthropogenic threats in Australian waters e.g. incidental catches in fishing gear, marine debris, shark control activities , vessel strike, defence activities, habitat loss and degradation, consumption of eggs by feral animals, etc. However, the Torres Strait Regional Authority and Indigenous leaders accept that Indigenous harvest is the major threat to dugongs and turtles in the Torres Strait. There is western scientific evidence that these levels are to high to be sustainable, threatening the cultural values of Torres Strait Islanders (e.g. Heinsohn et al. 2004, Limpus et al 2000, Limpus 2000, Marsh et al. 2004). This assessment is generally supported by most leaders.

The harvest of marine turtles and dugongs in Torres Strait is currently not regulated for several reasons including:

• There is little robust quantitive data on the size of the harvest. CSIRO attempts to collect harvest statistics have concentrated on communities in the Protected Zone and have not included the most populous Inner Island communities of the villages along the Papua New Guinea coast.
• There is a lack of estimates of demographic parameters of foraging populations of turtles, e.g. recruitment, sex ratios and breeding rates. Robust estimates of these parameters are essential to estimate sustainable levels of harvest
• Only limited efforts have been made by research groups or Government agencies to engage Torres Strait Islanders in the collection of the data required to manage the fisheries under both western scientific and traditional ecological knowledge frameworks. Such engagement is vital to the preparation of culturally and ecologically sensitive management strategies for marine turtles and dugongs within the Torres Strait Islander estates.

One of the best ways of demonstrating to locals the nature and scale of the problem is to actively involve them in the research process. In Torres Strait, Indigenous people have very good traditional knowledge of sea turtles and dugongs at a local scale. However, most islanders do not appreciate the larger spatial and temporal scales at which these animals operate, because they have not exposed to the tools and techniques employed by western scientists. In addition, experience elsewhere shows that such results are more likely to be accepted if Indigenous people are involved in actual collection of the data. Excellent results have been achieved in the Northern Territory by using satellite trackers to educate people about the migratory nature of sea turtles in their local area (Kennett et al., 2004) and in September 2004, we will attempt to catch and satellite track dugongs in Torres Strait for the first time with funding from DEH and assistance from Torres Strait Islanders.

Similarly, active involvement in measuring the population biology parameters of dugongs and green turtles can provide an appreciation of their susceptability to over-harvesting. Our group has an established record of doing this work for dugongs in Torres Strait (e.g. Kwan 2002). Hamann has considerable experience in monitoring the reproductive status of live turtles using the laparoscopic techniques developed by QPWS.

Active involvement in monitoring their traditional harvest also helps Indigenous people to:

1. understand the implications of their level of harvest,
2. evaluate the effectiveness of their management strategies, and
3. help design changes as necessary.

Thus monitoring has the potential to provide important feedback to communities about the value and effectiveness of managing their turtle and dugong fisheries. Important information on the selectivity of the turtle harvest will be obtained by comparing the reproductive status of the turtle community on the reefs of the Inner Islands and the turtles harvested from these reefs.

Most importantly, this project has the support of the Torres Strait community and the CRC Torres Strait. This support will facilitate the research team's engagement with local community members who will be directly involved in information gathering, field activities and raising awareness between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. The community engagement component of the project is important because it promotes community responsibility, enthusiasm, ownership and capacity.