Turtle's slaying shows we need more Cousteaus

June 29, 1997

Eighty-seven years is a long time, but not long enough for Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Unfortunately, he died before his work was done.

Although his ardent writings and dazzling photography awakened millions to the world underwater, he couldn't reach everybody.

Last weekend in Marathon, a little girl named Michelle was fishing from a motel dock when she accidentally snagged a sea turtle. The child called to family members, who hurried over to investigate the commotion.

You needn't be a student of Cousteau documentaries to know that sea turtles in Florida and around the world are in danger of being wiped out. The humane response would have been to unhook the animal and let it swim away.

That's what one of the girl's relatives originally claimed they'd done. But that isn't what actually happened.

According to the Florida Marine Patrol, one of the family members grabbed a spear gun and shot the turtle as it struggled on the end of the fishing line.

Then, witnesses say, the family carried it to their boat and sped off. Other tourists, infuriated, notified authorities.

When the Coast Guard intercepted the boat in Florida Bay, officers found the deck smeared with blood, but no turtle. On shore, more blood was found in a garbage can. Samples were collected for evidence.

Killing turtles is a serious crime. The Marine Patrol has charged Rene Robinson, Carlos Robinson and Ricardo Robinson, of Miami. The federal government also might prosecute.

Officers say Rene Robinson admitted spearing the turtle and stashing it in the garbage. When another relative informed him that keeping turtles was illegal, the family allegedly decided to dump the carcass offshore.

It was quite a gruesome little tableau to unfold on a Sunday evening in a resort area, the singular attraction of which is, ironically, its unique tropical sea life.

People travel to South Florida from all over the planet to see in person what they've seen only in books or on television—the soaring dolphins, the cruising sharks, the whole teeming kaleidoscope of the coral reefs.

They certainly don't come to see a helpless creature gored by some troglodyte with a spear gun.

Killing will happen as long as there's life underwater. Sea turtles and other endangered species are regularly taken, but often it's done because people are poor and hungry—not because they're bored on their vacation.

What took place in the Keys wouldn't have surprised Jacques Cousteau, though it would have saddened him. He spent a lifetime crusading against the foolhardy and wanton pillage of lakes, rivers and seas.

He tried to teach the difference between wise harvest and reckless butchery, and tried to show why all living things beneath the water's surface, from the regal blue whale to the unglamorous toadfish, have value far beyond the dollar.

It wasn't easy to open this remote new world, or to make outsiders share his awe. In the 19405 Cousteau helped invent the first aqualung, enabling humans to breathe underwater. Thus scuba was born, and soon the oceans had a political constituency.

Judging by the millions who dive and snorkel for the beauty, and by the millions more who flock to the Seaquarium and other marine exhibits, Cousteau's legacy is phenomenal.

Largely because of his pioneering, most who are lucky enough to see a wild sea turtle don't feel an impulse to spear it. Rather, they feel what they ought to feel, what their children feel: curiosity and wonderment.

Others feel nothing, yet Cousteau never gave up trying to enlighten them. He could have used another 87 years.

Same old song: Greed drowns another species

December 28, 1997

It's a tiny wisp of a bird, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow. You probably won't even notice after it's gone.

When the floodgates crank open at a dike west of Miami, millions of gallons of water will surge south toward a remote section of Everglades

National Park, home to one of the endangered sparrow's last breeding colonies.

The birds, which nest in grasses close to the ground, could be flooded out. Many experts believe the colony is unlikely to survive.

Everglades water is watched closely by government agencies. This year the levels are high again because of abundant rain. That's usually good for birds and wildlife, but not always. This year it's definitely not so good for the Cape Sable seaside sparrow.

There's so much water in the Everglades that the folks in charge need to flush the overflow someplace. If they send it to the park's eastern marshes, it might damage some homes that were built there.

So instead they're preparing to send the water farther west, where it could wash out a few hundred olive-colored songbirds, birds so rare that most Floridians have never laid eyes on them.

Pumping, due to start last week, was postponed because of publicity. A hard rain could force the issue, a decision to be made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District.

Officials in those agencies aren't happy about annihilating the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, but they say they've got few options. They say they're not allowed to flood private property.

That would be property known as the 81/2 Square Mile Area, notable as one of the only sites west of the Everglades levee where houses went up—about 350 of them. Why that was permitted to happen is no mystery. Somebody was trying to make money.

Now, whenever there's heavy rainfall, the residents of the 8 1/2 Square Mile Area get flooded. That's because they live in a swamp, and swamps flood; it literally comes with the territory. And when flooding occurs, the folks who live out there complain. Who wouldn't?

Allowing houses to be built on the wet side of a levee wasn't the most stupid thing Dade County politicians have ever done, but it's close. The price of that stupidity might well be the extermination of another species.

All that overflow water is being aimed away from the misbegotten houses in the 81/2 Square Mile Area, and straight toward the nesting grounds of the Cape Sable seasides. Biologists say this will be the fourth consecutive season that the sparrows cannot breed in the western part of the park, leaving only about 270 there alive.

Other colonies occupy eastern marshes, but because of water diversion practices, those areas will soon be too dry for nesting. Experts believe it won't be long before all the birds die off.

The story is a bleak echo. The last U.S. bird species to become extinct was another Florida sparrow, the dusky seaside. Once thriving in wetlands near the Kennedy Space Center, the dusky was done in by overdevelopment and pesticides.

Everglades National Park is supposed to offer sanctuary from such man-made threats. Indeed, birds living within the park's vast boundaries don't see many bulldozers or crop dusters.

Water is a more inescapable presence. The stuff that could drown out the Cape Sable seaside sparrows will be pumped into the park from conservation areas to the north. Efforts to redistribute the flow more evenly will probably come too late to save the birds.

A study is being done to help decide whether all the houses and lots in the 81/2 Square Mile Area should be repurchased and returned to a natural state. In the meantime, if it comes to a policy choice between soaking a bird and soaking somebody's carpet, the birds will probably lose.

Too bad they can't learn to build their nests in taller grass.

Too bad we can't learn not to build our subdivisions in swamps.