Impacts on marine turtles - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 76

Queensland after 1908 (Figures 6.1 and 6.2) . However, changes in fishing
practices may also have occurred in the industry after 1897, as the initial
reduction in the number of vessels registered was not immediately associated
with a decline in tortoise-shell exports. Instead, the industry may have become
less specialised and hawksbill turtles were probably harvested in an opportunistic
manner by the crews of vessels engaged in other fisheries, such as the bêche-de-
mer fishery. New markets for tortoise-shell were found in Japan and the United
States of America, although Great Britain remained the main destination for the
product, and a small quantity of tortoise-shell was also exported to New South
Wales . 2 N onetheless, the price of tortoise-shell remained low and a sharp decline
in the trade took place after 1908. Exports of tortoise-shell were particularly low
during the years of the First World War (Figure 6.1). In 1916, J. R. Smith (1916,
p1666), Inspector of Fisheries, stated: 'There is scarcely any demand for this shell
at present'. Two years later, the Queensland Inspector of Pearl-Shell Fisheries,
R. Holmes (1918, p1668), reported: 'The trade in connection with tortoiseshell
has declined to such an extent that it is now a negligible quantity so far as the
industry is concerned'.
A small revival of the tortoise-shell industry occurred after the First World
War, which persisted until the outbreak of the Second World War. By June
1929, the value of tortoise-shell exports was £1,643, and Barrett (1943, pp40-
1) wrote that in some years the annual revenue of the industry reached £2,000
or £3,000. Exports of tortoise-shell continued until at least 1938: production
statistics published by the QDHM indicate that a total of 17 cwt of 'turtle-shell'
was produced during 1933-1938 (Fison, 1935, p1104; 1936, p1155; 1937, p1414;
1938, p1295) . 3 However, the trade never again resumed in Queensland on a scale
comparable to that of the period before 1908. In the 1950s, synthetic materials
replaced the use of tortoise-shell and the market for the natural product collapsed.
Yet the evidence presented above indicates that by 1938 at least 86,020 lb (over
38 tons) of tortoise-shell had been exported from Queensland. As a result of
the scale of this fishing effort, the tortoise-shell industry probably represented
a significant impact on hawksbill turtle populations in northern Queensland
waters, particularly since an incentive existed to harvest larger animals that
yielded greater quantities of shell and that were more easily captured in the
vicinity of traditional breeding sites, and also because of the low rates of growth
and recruitment to adulthood that characterise the species.
Commercial marine turtle fishing in Queensland,
1867-1962
Besides tortoise-shell production, commercial fishing of marine turtles in
Queensland occurred between 1867 and 1962 for the production of turtle meat
and soup. Green turtles were exploited in the Great Barrier Reef and in Torres
Strait; the emergence of two centres in the commercial fishery reflects the fact
that two genetic stocks of green turtle exist, nesting in the Capricorn-Bunker