Florida seeks to toughen laws on poaching of sea turtle eggs (40623)

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They’re smuggled into the country from Latin America or plucked off Florida beaches at night to be sold in a black market authorities are struggling to stop.

They are sea turtle eggs, a purported aphrodisiac among Latin and Caribbean cultures and a delicacy among some in the South. And while wildlife officers try to stop nest raids and customs officials try to stop smugglers, a Florida lawmaker is sponsoring a bill to create tougher penalties for poachers.

“Unless somebody actually sees you removing the eggs from the nest, it’s not a felony. It’s a fairly low-level misdemeanor,” said Florida state Sen. Steven Geller. “If it’s a felony to take the eggs and if they catch you with 25, clearly you’re pushing eggs.”

Federal law allows penalties of up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines for taking eggs from nests, but poachers are often tried in state court. Geller’s bill, which would make it a felony to possess 12 or more sea turtle eggs, still needs House approval before going to Gov. Jeb Bush.

Turtles lay about 100 eggs per nest, and poachers sell the eggs, which are about the size of ping pong balls, for $2 to $3 each. They usually raid the nests between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. when there’s little chance of running into anyone on the beach.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife investigator Eddie McKissick said eggs are sold at restaurants and bars in the Miami area, but are rarely on the menu.

“It’s not the type of thing where you can just walk into a bar or restaurant and say ‘Let me get a couple of eggs.’ If they don’t know you, uh-uh, you’re not getting any eggs,” McKissick said. ” You have to know the right person, you have to know the right passwords or code words to get them.”

Sea turtle egg poaching is common in the Caribbean, Central America, Asia and India. In the United States, the largest poaching problem is in Florida, though McKissick said it happens up the coast into North Carolina among groups whose past generations took eggs of the beach before it was illegal.

“They take an egg, punch a hole in it, toss a little hot sauce down inside and suck it down,” McKissick said. “There are people in all those cultures who would swear that it’s an aphrodisiac.”

McKissick said his agency only has two investigators to cover miles of coastline. Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission also only has a handful of people to protect thousands of nests.

Officers do get some help from volunteers like Debbie Sobel, president of the Sea Turtle Conservation League of Singer Island.

When the group finds disturbed nests, it reports it to the state, which sets up overnight surveillance. While that has helped catch poachers, the penalties aren’t strong enough to stop them, she said.

“They get a slap on the hand and they send them off. They keep catching the same men over and over again,” Sobel said. “Then they get out on the beach and poach eggs to pay their fine.”