There's money

and soup for sea farmers

I had not realised until I read Australian Sea Turtles that turtle soup is not made from the fleshy parts of the beast but from a sub stance called calipee prepared from its lower shell.

To slay a turtle weighing some two or three hundred pounds for the sake of a few ounces of heavily flavoured gelatin might be accounted a wanton sacrifice but, of course, a turtle also yields a good quantity of meat and oil as well as excellent leather and shell. So it is a much sought after creature, and since human demand continues to rise, one is not surprised to learn that in many parts of the world turtle populations have been drastically reduced.

The Australian region is one of the few happy exceptions, but as the author. Dr Robert Bustard, points out, it is only a matter of time be fore the rookeries of the Barrier Reef and the Torres Strait islands will be as heavily pressured as most others.

He argues in this book that now is the time to take steps that will not only preserve our local popu lations but also help to restore the global population to its former high level. If we were to do this, har vesting could continue without danger of bringing turtles to the point of extinction.

Much of Dr Bustard’s book deals with the general biology of turtles.

Since the seven species are widely spread throughout the warmer seas of the world, the title of the book is at first sight something of a mis nomer. BuT, as Dr Bustard indicates, a significant section of his subject matter deals with methods and results of his surveys and estimates of turtle population numbers, rookery sites, and so on, around the Queensland coasts, and hence there is some justification for giving a national bias to the title.

So do not be misled: while the book is a specific contribution to Australian natural history it is also of considerable interest to anyone con cerned with turtles, whether from a biological or an economic point of view, anywhere in the world.

The final section of the book deals with the prospects of conserving turtle populations, and even of farming them. Dr Bustard is very keen on farming them and after discussing

some of his own pilot schemes oper ating on Darnley and Murray is lands, as well as the experience of ;he world’s first turtle farm in the British West Indies, he comments that ‘it may not be long before the green ;urtle is added to the short but growing Ist of animals domesticated by man”.

He points out that those factors 3f turtle biology that make them

susceptible to human predation are the very factors that make them ideal creatures for farming. The problems are not technical but economic, legal and political.

Dr Bustard is well qualified to write this book. He is well-known to Australian zoologists as a herpeto logist and they have followed his work on reptiles in general, and turtles in particular, with keen interest. This book, well written and handsomely illustrated as well as containing a good bibliography and index, will be received by them with considerable gratitude. —John Simons.

(Australian Sea Turtles. By Robert

Bustard. Collins. $5.95).