TURTLE IN TRADE
Of all things, sea turtles have become the substance of trade news these days. In March 1998, the US slapped a ban on the import of shrimp from India on the plea that trawlers which fish for shrimp in Indian waters do not use the turtle excluder device. India challenged the US action at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) forum and won an interim ruling in its favour. However, the US is not moved and its ban remains in force. For the same reason shrimp from Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand are also not being allowed into the US market.
India's case at WTO was successfully argued by Priyambada Hejmadi, the eminent scientist and Chandra Shekhar Kar of the Orissa State forest department. The burden of their argument was that India had taken concrete steps to conserve the Olive Ridley sea turtles which gathers on India's Orissa coastline in spectacular numbers.
Before 1975, the Indian experts argued, when mass nesting of the Olive Ridley was first noted on the Gahirmatha coast in Orissa, an estimated 50,000 turtles used to be fished every year and more than one lakh turtle eggs despatched to West Bengal to be sold. This practice has ceased entirely because of government's energetic efforts.
Hejmadi and Kar also told WTO that Orissa was the first state in India to acquire TEDs. Since these had only just been introduced, fitting out trawlers with excluder devices will take some time.
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