Monday, June 16, 2025

By Joris FIORITI

Photo by Fredrik Lerneryd

Carried by four men, the large turtle, just hooked by fishermen, doesn’t yet know that it will be cared for, weighed, ringed, then released back into the sea, a little bolder. Like thousands of her fellow creatures before her, protected by the Kenyan NGO Local Ocean Conservation.
With over 24,000 turtle rescues – some of them multiple rescues – recorded in the 28 years of its existence, the small organization and its twenty or so employees based in Watamu, on Kenya’s east coast, is fighting on its own scale for the preservation of a species abused by human beings. And with impressive results.
“We have to save as many as possible, because they depend on us for their survival,” exclaims Fikiri Kiponda, 47, 16 of whom have worked for Local Ocean Conservation (LOC). “Every time I release a turtle, it gives me great joy. My motivation just keeps growing.”
The Kenyan NGO has come a long way. When it was founded in 1997, it was just a group of volunteers keen to protect marine life. In its sights were the majestic turtles dying in fishermen’s nets, when they weren’t simply captured to be eaten,” recalls Mr. Kiponda.

Nearly three decades of awareness-raising in schools and surrounding villages, however, have largely borne fruit. In Watamu, as in Diani, further south, where LOC has a branch office, “the perception of killing a turtle has really changed a lot”, he enthuses.
– Amputated –
LOC, whose finances rely mainly on individual donations, compensates fishermen if they catch a turtle, so that they bring it to the organization.
More than a thousand of them take part in the program, and do so primarily in the name of preserving the species, as the organization points out: the reward they receive does not make up for the hours of work lost.
Once ashore, the carapace reptiles are weighed, ringed and, if necessary, treated in a clinic if they have struggled to free themselves from a hook or net, as their skin and muscles can be “badly torn”, observes Lameck Maitha, the NGO’s health coordinator.
A case in point is “Safari”, the “queen of the center”, according to Mr. Maitha. Found 150 kilometers further north, near Lamu, this young female of 12 to 15 years of age – turtles are easily centenarians – was transported by plane and then by car to the LOC, where she arrived moribund.
Weak, amorphous and with a flipper whose bone was detaching, Safari eventually had to be amputated. But she has now recovered and could be released, the health coordinator hopes.

Tumors are also sometimes removed from turtles, as are crustaceans that have encrusted their shells or flippers with water pollution, weakening them.
“When a turtle eats something it can’t digest, such as plastic, it can cause a blockage in its digestive system, which in turn creates gas, causing it to float,” explains Lameck Maitha.
“We’re finding more and more of them floating, because there’s more and more plastic in the ocean,” he sighs. At the center, bloated turtles are prescribed laxatives to evacuate foreign bodies.
– “Survivors” –
Another task for Local Ocean Conservation is to protect the eggs that the turtles come to bury in the sand at Watamu from rising sea levels – by moving them if necessary.
The highly-travelled females only lay their eggs on the beaches where they were born. Every three or four years, they produce hundreds of eggs, laid in several clutches over a period of several months.
After about 60 days, the first turtle emerges from the sand. “It’s going to be a little guy, whom I always call Kevin,” smiles Joey Ngunu. And once Kevin comes out, the rest follow”, in a slow, clumsy procession to the first waves, preferably at night to avoid predators as much as possible.

According to the NGO’s technical director, only one turtle in 1,000 reaches adulthood (20-25 years). “Living in the sea as a turtle must be crazy, because you have to face so many dangers,” he comments: “fish, poachers, human pressure with plastic, fishing, industrial fishing… Turtles are definitely survivors.”
Thanks to LOC’s work, this survival is a little easier off the coast of Watamu, where “more turtles are being observed than before”, boasts Joey Ngunu, who, like his two colleagues, says he is “proud” of his work.

Humaniterre with AFP