It isn't wise to extrapolate and say that the same thing will happen to Atlantic ridleys. No one has been studying sea turtles long enough to know whether there are big cycles in their breeding populations. But if Lepidochelys kempi, or any other sea turtle, for that matter, becomes extinct in a few years, it really won't be missed by the business executive in Los Angeles or the factory worker in Detroit. The housewife in Chicago won't know it's gone, and the shrimper may scratch his head and say, "You know, I ain't seen one of them turtles in years." When the person who bought the fashionable wallet made out of genuine turtle hide wears out his novelty and looks to replace it, he may be annoyed that he'll have to go back to one made of cowhide.
The timeless turtle will look on as man works feverishly to develop destructive nuclear weapons that will blow the world apart many times over. And perhaps one day when he pops his head up from the sea, he'll see a world empty of man, with barnacles growing on the ruins of the cities and buildings. And somewhere, perhaps on a Mexican beach, a handful of Kemp's ridleys filled with eggs will crawl out on the sand, unmolested and free.
Jack Rudloe
Time of the Turtle
p. 105-106
1979, Penguin Books
We can share beaches and ocean with sea turtles but it requires commitment and effort on our part. We can make certain that future generations will have the opportunity to know these unusual animals. The late Dr. Archie Carr, a scientist and author who almost singlehandedly began to turn the tide on the extinction of sea turtles, summed it up when he wrote, "For most of the wild things on earth the future must depend upon the conscience of mankind." Our planet has come to an unprecedented point in its history where the actions of one species--man--will determine the fate of life on earth. It is not too late to ensure a future for sea turtles.
Victoria B. Van Meter
Florida's Sea Turtles
p. 50
Reprinted from Florida's Sea Turtles, Copyright 1992, Florida Power & Light Company.
Re. the Caribbean Conservation CorporationEverybody in the organization has subscribed to the original concept that its most important attributes are a single-minded resistance to any distraction from the central aim of keeping watch over the Tortuguero nesting colony and a determination to make it the most thoroughly studied sea turtle population in the world.
Archie Carr
The Sea Turtle - So Excellent A Fishe
p. 241
1986, University of Texas Press
Mostly the folks who find bottles just fill in the cards and mail them to Woods Hole...
Once in a while, however, the person who comes upon a bottle is so exhilarated by the event and can't bear to see it close with the impersonal filling-in of a card...
In any case the resulting letters are likely to be rewarding... [letter quoted verbatim]
Cahuita, Costa Rica
March 4, 1967Dear Friend,
It is with great pleasure I return thank to you all for your prize that you have given out for the bottles that were sent out. It may seems somhow simple to some others but to me it was somthing great not for the reward but to know what was the arts and intress that you all had to send out those bottles. It was really somthing great for I my self would realy like somthing about the same but would just sit and ponder it to my self and would never think of doing such.
Well if there is any more about such I am willing to take part just to gain a little more experents about the sea for I am living very near and instead of siting and pondering I will keep in touch with you all.
Sincerely
Stanley DixonI am asking you all not to be nettled with me for not answering your letter in spanish I read spanish very well but I don't write it.
The image of Stanley Dixon sitting and pondering is one of the rewards of sea turtle research, and a thing I shall often sit and ponder.
Archie Carr
The Sea Turtle - So Excellent A Fishe
p. 70
1986, University of Texas Press
That was how I came to be in the dark classroom in Texas when the Kodachrome arribada went ashore at Rancho Nuevo, and the world suddenly seemed to me to be a place where anything can happen.
The film was short. It was shaky in places, faded with time, and rainy with scratches. But it was cinema of the year all the same, the picture of the decade. For me really, it was the movie of all time. For me, personally, as a searcher after ridleys, the film outdid everything from Birth of a Nation to Zorba the Greek. It made Andres Herrera in my mind a cinematographer far finer than Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock or Walt Disney could ever aspire to be. At the Cannes Festival the film might not receive great acclaim, although it might. To any zoologist, however, especially to a turtle zoologist and most specifically to me, the film was simply shattering. It is still hard for me to understand the apathy of a world in which such a movie can be so little celebrated.
Archie Carr
The Sea Turtle - So Excellent A Fishe
p. 116
1986, University of Texas Press
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