Hanoi - Vietnamese police removed 849 sea turtles from a fish-farming cage of a man who was illegally raising them and released them into a nearby marine preserve, a police official said Friday. The man had bought the sea turtles several at a time from fishermen, said Vo Duc Thang, chief of police in the coastal city of Nha Trang. He had raised them to maturity in a fish-farming pen in a local bay, intending to sell them for their meat and shells.
Thang said the turtles, which weighed a total of 6 tons, had been transported to the nearby Nha Trang Marine Protected Area and released shortly after police discovered them Wednesday.
The turtles belonged to the species ertemochelys imbricate, also known as the hawksbill turtle. It is considered critically endangered by the World Conservation Union. Privately raising or selling it is prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES.
International wildlife and trafficking organizations said it was also illegal to raise or sell sea turtles in Vietnam but that the practice was not unheard of.
Nguyen Hoang Linh, a staff member at a project that promotes environmentally sustainable livelihoods around the Nha Trang marine preserve, said a related project on the southern island of Phu Quoc had found and released four sea turtles being raised in a cage earlier this year.
Linh said such turtles were usually netted as by-catch by fishermen looking for other species.
Police and wildlife officials said they had never heard of a previous case involving so many turtles.
Wildlife experts said they were not familiar enough with the case to say whether it was advisable to release 849 turtles raised in captivity into a single nature area. Police said they had no choice because there were no legal provisions allowing them to hold or care for the turtles.
