Anger at Tonga's turtle feast
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-t...-turtle-feast/
Saving Tonga's endangered turtles can be tough, writes Michael Field.
A SEATURTLE feast for Tonga's Methodist ministers has sparked a clash with a Kiwi woman, who has made a life's work out of saving the endangered reptiles.
Jo Kupu, known in Tonga as the "turtle lady", said something good might actually come out of the incident, which saw 10 turtles eaten.
Originally from Mt Cook Village, Kupu has rescued around 600 turtles in the last decade, buying them at the Nuku'alofa market and releasing them.
Green turtles are endangered, although there is evidence they are making a comeback in the South Pacific.
But, for the fishermen of Ha'apai, when the arrival of mating turtles coincided with the Free Wesleyan Church annual conference in Nuku'alofa, it was an opportunity too good to miss.
Fourteen were netted alive and shipped to Nuku'alofa, to lie in the sun on their backs awaiting their fate.
"They suffocate when they are upside down, they choke and drown on their own saliva," Kupu said.
She and husband Levini heard about the turtles but, by the time they got to the market, 10 had gone to the Methodists. The remaining four were rescued, but one, thought to be about 150 years old – nearly as old as Methodism in Tonga – died soon after it was returned to the sea.
"All the years I've been involved buying turtles and releasing them, we've never seen turtles that big, and so many," Kupu said.
Last year, she heard of a 200-year-old turtle being caught, but the fisherman hid it from them and they could not save it.
"It made me really angry because no one cared. The fisherman swore at me," she said.
In the past decade, she has been funding people to go into the markets to buy the turtles. "I've bought hundreds, I've been doing it for years, since I was about four. I think they are amazing creatures and deserve to be in the sea."
With breeding programmes in Tahiti, Samoa and Vanuatu, turtles are starting to return to Tonga, but the law is vague over whether they are protected. A turtle tagged in Tahiti in 1990 recently turned up in the Nuku'alofa market and was later eaten.
The incident with the Methodists produced action from the government, with turtle catch laws being changed.
Kupu believes the turtles are coming to Tonga to nest.
"They just disappeared but they've turned up again and we've got to protect them."
The couple, who fund their turtle rescue themselves, manage a coffee plantation, and co-ordinate an animal welfare programme that provides vets to treat local animals, in exchange for donations.
As a child, Kupu was taken with her father, Jack Taylor, to the Royal Palace and was photographed with Queen Salote and an ancient turtle called Tu'i Malila – said to have been given to Tongan chiefs in 1777 by Captain James Cook. It died in 1965.
