The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (39 page)

I think it very unlikely that I will ever fully understand the subtleties of the cultures of Australian aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. Instead, I do my best to be sensitive to differences, pick
up what I can, and try to avoid making a complete ass of myself. On this expedition, there were to be boats from the Gudjuda aboriginal group living on lands around Bowen, and others from the Girringun group living further north near Cardwell. I was told that members of the two groups would be sticking to their own boats because of issues involving authority.

I also learned that, by tradition, women were forbidden from jumping out of boats to catch turtles. On a turtle-catching expedition, women were not even permitted to pilot a boat while men jumped. Exceptions were made in the case of women on university-owned boats, but only because turtles were being captured for research, and not for consumption.

After buying provisions for Saturday and Sunday’s breakfasts, we drove to the Life Saving Club for an orientation to the weekend’s activities. The event was catered by the folks from QBAG. Ellen had explained to the Townsville crew that the event would be a dry one. Some young aboriginal persons in the community were experiencing significant difficulties associated with alcohol consumption, and the most sensitive thing was for us all to avoid drinking. It seemed a strange restriction given that when we arrived there was a group of young men and women drinking in the shadows.

The evening’s first speaker was Gudjuda Elder “Uncle” Eddie Smallwood, who welcomed us all to the country. He said of the weekend, “It’s gonna be deadly.” I started to worry about sharks but was later told that “deadly” is an Australian expression, used particularly by aboriginal people, roughly equivalent to “awesome.” “This is all about turtles,” he said. “It’s all about sharing.” Eddie commented on the widespread opposition of white Australians to the consumption of sea turtles by aboriginal groups. “Yeah,” he said unprompted, “we do eat them, but how many? Not many.”

Gudjuda Elder Jim Gaston was then introduced as one of the traditional custodians of the land. Jim had been capturing turtles for research purposes for many years, and would be piloting one of the boats. He explained that there would be six boats in operation, each with a designated pilot and turtle jumpers. These vessels would also
transport members of the media who had come to film the proceedings. Jim spoke at length about safety, the number-one concern of the weekend. All jumpers were required to protect themselves with wet suits, boots, gloves, and helmets. Each boat pilot would ensure that he had a GPS unit and reliable radios for ship-to-shore communication. He then explained that we were all to meet at the community’s boat launch at 7 a.m. It seemed to me that small countries have been successfully invaded with less preparation.

Jim claimed that the experience of catching turtles and the resulting surge of adrenalin was better than any drug. “You want a good hit? Come with me; I’ll give you a good hit. And it’s free!” He finished off by saying, “Have a good weekend. If you don’t, it’s your fault.”

Ellen spoke briefly about FPTHV and the resulting tumours, and explained how it had first been spotted in the region by Jim and his colleagues. In their turn, each group sent forward a representative to address the crowd. The mob from Cardwell, QBAG, WWF, first-aid providers … A lot of groups were involved with this project, each with very different backgrounds and very different priorities.

It was then time for a brief question-and-answer session. The single most elegant question had an unexpected answer. “Will we be cleaning up the turtles? Will we be taking off the barnacles attached to their shells?” Ellen responded that we would leave the barnacles in place. First, they didn’t hamper the turtles at all. Second, because these barnacles were found nowhere other than on sea turtles, and because sea turtles are endangered, the barnacles are also endangered.

H
AVING GROWN UP
in a landlocked province on the Canadian prairies, I had never been called upon to wear a wetsuit. However, it was the tail end of jellyfish season on the north Queensland coast, and local stingers were not to be dismissed; people have been known to die from the pain. I visited five stores in Townsville without finding a suit that would fit without making me look like a fur seal with bloat.

On Saturday morning, I rose at five thirty and stepped outside
to watch a rare alignment of planets in the rapidly brightening sky. Despite predictions to the contrary, the world didn’t end. After breakfast, I walked to Bowen’s boat launch with my companions. Locals using the boat ramp to launch their pleasure craft looked at us, decked out in our unlovely wetsuits, as though we were Martians. In their turn, all six boats were offloaded.
Turtle Researcher 8
was a 4.5-metre yellow polyethylene craft and looked like a giant bathtub duck. The mob from Cardwell would be sailing in
Girringun Wulgu
and
Girringun Bruce.
I assumed that the name Bruce was based on an Australian cliché. Thank goodness I asked before making a joke, as the boat was named for an elder who had died the year before.

I was fortunate enough to be assigned as a jumper on
Gudjuda Gungu,
an Ensign 4.93-metre aluminum sport-fishing boat piloted by Jim Gaston. In the local language,
gungu
meant “sea turtle.” It was hard to believe that anyone knew more about capturing sea turtles than Jim, as he had personally caught 900. We were joined by Lydia Gibson, a WWF marine policy officer, and three members of a film crew working for Channel 10’s 7
pm Project
—Simon Wise, a producer and director; Jac Tonks, a field producer; and Serge Negus, a reporter. Like me, Serge was to be a jumper.

Just minutes from the boat launch, Jim’s outboard motor started giving him grief. Sputtering was followed by wheezing, followed shortly after by not much of anything. Thinking that the problem might be the result of water in the fuel, Jim changed tanks. Sputter, sputter, wheeze, belch, silence. All six of us stared at the outboard motor as though our glares would shame the device into more cooperative behaviour. We agreed to blame the situation on a dodgy fuel pump, which was resolved by periodic squeezing of a rubber pump in the fuel line.

We passed stingrays in their dozens. Mistaking one of those for a turtle could be a terminal experience. Flying fish roared away from our boat with only their tails touching the water. We then spied a massive dugong, which sped away at a rate that seemed impossible for such a bulky creature, leaving a big bow wave.

When we got to the correct general area, Jim handed over control of the boat to me while he got into position to make the first jump. We spied a candidate, and I manoeuvred the boat to bring our target to the starboard side. With a zig to starboard and a zag to port, I tried to match the turtle’s heading and speed. Jim hurled himself from the boat and surfaced a moment later with our first turtle of the day. We recorded the time, latitude, and longitude, and applied a numbered metal tag to the trailing edge of the turtle’s front left flipper.

“Would you like to catch one now?” There are probably things that I would rather do on a Saturday morning than try to catch an endangered green sea turtle, but I couldn’t think of any. I had to remove my prescription sunglasses in preparation. And so, slightly blind, I positioned myself on the starboard bow while Serge and Jim used their superior vision to find me a target.

“Turtle!” cried Serge, pointing off the forward port side. Jim throttled up and steered the boat to bring the turtle starboard, where he could most easily keep an eye on me. From the turtle’s furious pace and evasive manoeuvres, it was pretty clear that it didn’t want to be caught. But I was having none of that, and launched myself into the ocean. I made the rookie mistake of jumping where the turtle was, and not where it would be by the time I got there. My palms slipped down its back, and I watched it disappear much faster than I, or anyone else, can swim.

“Did you have breakfast?” asked Jim. “Well, there’s the problem—you’re not hungry enough.” I was learning to love his smile.

Surely nothing could keep me from my second prey. Fifteen minutes later, Jim got another turtle into position and I jumped, only to find that I had made my dive too shallow, and it escaped under me. When I surfaced, I spied Serge diving in, and moments later he came up with my turtle.

By my third attempt, it seemed that word of my incompetence had spread amongst the turtles of Mount Gordon Bay. A moment before I jumped, the turtle deked right and then swerved left. I missed it by about a metre. Surfacing and swearing, I again saw
Serge with my turtle in his arms. After my first two attempts, I had hauled myself over the gunnels, but trying after my third jump, I lost my grip and fell back in. I asked for the ladder to be put over the side. I must be getting old. Even before we had the chance to tag and measure that turtle, Jim spotted another. Serge hurled himself forward and surfaced, victorious.

“You’re going to get one,” said Jim. “You’ve got to believe in yourself.”

Now, I am usually the poster boy for self-confidence, but I was starting to have doubts. Everything we passed looked like a turtle. Every rock, every piece of seagrass …

“Turtle!”

On my fourth attempt, I magically found my hands around the shoulders of the large, struggling creature. I had caught a sea turtle, and no one could ever take that victory away from me. I now found myself in a very awkward situation. My legs were trailing behind, but when I tried to right myself I found that the bulk of the turtle kept me from getting my feet under me. It was trying to pull me down. No power on Earth short of loss of consciousness was going to make me let go of that turtle. And so I craned my neck just enough to get my lips above water, took a breath, submerged, slowly pulled back on the turtle as hard as I could, and gained purchase. I surfaced to applause.

I caught my turtle at 10:45 a.m. on Saturday, May 14, at 20.04924° south and 148.23346° east. It was a beaut. Its plastron was 54.0 centimetres, and we gave it a tag numbered K52482, which contained instructions to return it to P.O. Box 15155, City East Queensland 4002, if found. Like the other four turtles we had caught, mine showed no evidence of FPTHV tumours.

“How does that feel?” Jim had been right. It felt like the rush of the greatest drug, an injection of emotion. He shook my hand and seemed amused that I couldn’t stop grinning and talking.

We tried for one more capture, but this turtle had an interesting escape tactic. It turned in circles that were almost the same as the turning radius of Jim’s boat. After we had completed our third
circle, the turtle disappeared into the ring of silt kicked up by the propeller and refused to come out of hiding.

The falling tide had left the waterline 200 or 300 metres from the beach. This meant that we had to lug our captives across the sand to the folks who would process them. While carrying one of our captured turtles, I admired its gorgeous flecked grey eyes. After putting it in the shade, I fell into a telling conversation with an aboriginal fellow. He said that if the courts would turn young transgressors back to the community instead of incarcerating them, many could be helped to turn their lives around. It might be possible to get them involved with sea turtle work.

“But the courts aren’t willing to do that yet?” I asked.

“No, it’s not the courts; it’s the young fellas.” He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask. I suspect that if every young fellow, and perhaps every young woman, had the opportunity to be part of a team that jumps out of a boat to catch sea turtles in order to better understand their natural history, a lot of lives would turn out differently. Unsolicited, my companion started talking about the white community’s attitudes about sea turtle harvest by the aboriginal communities. I had heard disparate estimates of how many turtles were taken each year, but I didn’t feel that it was right to ask for his guess. Instead, I asked what sea turtle tasted like. It wasn’t a fair question. How do you describe a taste, except by comparing it to another taste? Green sea turtle, I was told, tastes a lot like green sea turtle.

I now had the opportunity to help the ground-based crew. My first job was to move, with Serge, a particularly big turtle from one station to the next. Ellen showed us how to position ourselves on either side of the turtle, on our haunches, with our knees outside of our elbows. We grabbed it with one hand over the shoulder and the other at the back of the carapace and lifted, using our legs. When it was necessary to turn the turtle upside down, it was crucial that we turn it clockwise, and then turn it right-side-up counter-clockwise. Ellen explained that it was possible, by turning a sea turtle over and over, to twist up its internal organs.

Between them, the six boats had captured thirty-nine turtles. Only three showed tumours caused by FPTHV. I spotted a couple that were missing portions of flippers, probably carried away by sharks. The turtles were brought to the beach in groups, but the folks on shore could process them only one at a time, and so each arriving boat created something of a logjam. Tents had been erected to keep the turtles and their handlers out of the sun as much as possible. The head of each turtle was cloaked in a hood with a drawstring to help keep it calm.

A blood sample was drawn from each subject. This was quite a challenge, since blood vessels aren’t as obvious anywhere on a turtle as on a human arm. Then the length of the carapace was recorded. A small skin sample was taken, and swabs were made of the skin, mouth, and cloaca. A comprehensive set of photographs was taken of each subject. A drill was used to sample a small core of the carapace for studies of environmental contaminants. Each turtle was then weighed before being released. While the remaining turtles waited their turns to be bled or swabbed, children poured seawater over them to keep them damp and cool.

As operations wound down for the day, I walked back to the boat with Jim and the television crew. They needed additional video footage to round out their coverage of the turtle rodeo. We stopped a few hundred metres offshore so that Serge could interview Jim about his involvement in sea turtle research.