The Case of the Green Turtle: An Uncensored History of a Conservation Icon

CHAPTER 11. You Lost the Turtle Boat

165 On March 23, 1971, the day the US Supreme Court let the Mason Act’s ban on exotic skins take effect in New York, the merchant vessel A. M. Adams moved slowly up to the wharf at the foot of Margaret Street in Key West, Florida. Built on Grand Cayman Island for Norberg Thompson’s green turtle cannery in Key West, the Adams had been the largest and fastest of the Caymanian turtle schooners. Skippered in her heyday by Captain Allie Ebanks, she was now a motor vessel, her back deck covered with a chunky deckhouse and her masts shortened to hoist cargo instead of sail. But her cargo was the same as it had been for three decades: giant green turtles lying supine on every available inch of the deck and in the hold. She was the run boat now; her job was to carry to Key West the green turtles caught near the Miskito Cays off Nicaragua by the four remaining catching boats from Grand Cayman. The captain reported that the turtles were caught “around the Cayman Islands,” but everyone knew they were taken illegally from the Miskito Bank.1 That morning, the Adams was bringing only 135 turtles, a far cry from the 400 to 500 turtles the Adams was accustomed to hauling. The crew could see the wharf was crowded with the usual cast of characters: the men from Sea Farms, Inc., which now owned Thompson’s former cannery, and a small cluster of tourists waiting to see the giants hoisted onto the dock and slid down into the kraals. The crew also recognized the reporter from the local newspaper and thought that perhaps Bill Hannum, the president of Sea Farms, had organized a publicity stunt. These days the company’s main source of revenue was the tourists who ate at the restaurant and paid admissions to see turtles swimming in the kraals. But why was the bureau chief from the Miami Herald on the dock, with his camera slung around his neck? As the eight-man crew began to hoist the turtles onto the dock, they heard someone shout for them to stop. It was Don Sweat, the marine chapter eleven You Lost the Turtle Boat 166 The Case of the Green Turtle biologist who worked for Sea Farms. He told them to keep the turtles suspended from the hoisting arm until he could measure the length of their shells. If they were less than forty-one inches long, Hannum had told him, Sea Farms could not keep them in the kraals or sell them up north. Making a great show of measuring each turtle for the reporter’s Figure 25 Turtle cannery biologist measuring A. M. Adams’s green turtle landings for compliance with Florida’s new forty-one-inch minimum size regulation, Key West. From “Turtle Industry Faces Extinction,” Miami Herald Mar. 29, 1971. © The Miami Herald, 1971. Photograph by Wright Langley. You Lost the Turtle Boat 167 camera, Sweat shouted out each measurement. When he was done, only five were forty-one inches long. The average length was thirty-five inches. Bill Hannum later told the reporter that the trip was a bust, and the crew might not get paid. But, he said, “don’t blame me, blame Governor Reubin Askew.”2 The week before, the governor and his cabinet, miles up north in Tallahassee, had set a forty-one-inch minimum size rule for green turtles in Florida. The governor had set “an unrealistic size limit on turtles ,” Hannum said. “You can’t find them that size, so we will cease operations , right now—we never made a nickel on the operation, anyway.”3 Hannum also blamed the citizens of Key West and the local newspapers for not taking his warning seriously. And what about the turtle fishermen ? “I sent all the men home yesterday and that’s the end of it, as far as I’m concerned. You lost the turtle boat.”4 Twenty-seven cannery workers were out of a job, and the A. M. Adams was tied to dock, awaiting her conversion to a snapper boat. Bob Ingle had taken Hannum’s warning seriously, however. He was the director of the marine science bureau of Florida’s Department of Natural Resources. The week before the arrival of the Adams, he had proposed a less restrictive minimum size regulation to Governor Askew and his cabinet. He...