Impacts on marine turtles - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 78

[Green turtles] are caught in nets of a large mesh, and are mostly used in
Brisbane at the hotels, and also preserved in tins as soup by Skinner of the
Valley and other meat preservers. They are most common in the southern
parts of the Bay, such as Russell Island, Swan Bay, and Broadwater, where a
couple of men working industriously may take eight or ten per week. They
are of large size and sometimes weigh 5 cwt.
In 1896, Saville-Kent indicated that preserved turtle meat was sought for
the Chinese and other markets. Fison (1897, p637) stated that Peter Tuska had
carried out a turtle-fishing operation in the Central-Moreton districts, where the
supply of turtle meat was found to be 'sufficient for the moderate demand of
the Brisbane Preserving Works'. Davitt (1898, pp261-2) provided the following
account of turtles in the Fitzroy River estuary:
On rising early in the morning to enjoy the view of the estuary of the Fitzroy,
I was made aware of our having shipped several new passengers somewhere
during the night. These were huge turtles, enormous monsters, so heavy that
a sailor could not lift one of them. They are plentiful off the coast, inside
the Barrier Reef, from Keppel Bay up northwards. They are, of course, cheap
owing to their numbers, and it is customary, I was told, for drinking salons in
the coastal towns to have turtle soup 'on tap' in the drinking bars […].
By 1899, Fison (1899) reported, green turtles were still 'in fair supply when
required' and, the following year, James H. Stevens (1900, p998), the next
Inspector of Fisheries, stated that a 'good supply of turtle can nearly always be
obtained when required'.
In 1900 and 1901, the turtle industry expanded in response to the introduction
of refrigeration facilities, which facilitated the export of frozen turtle meat to
London and Vancouver (Stevens, 1901, p1325). The Brisbane Fish Agency
Company alone handled 70 green turtles during that year, obtaining £70 for those
animals. Over the following two years, orders for turtles were easily met by that
company - 53 animals being ordered in the first year - and 14,766 lbs of frozen
turtle meat, in addition to 142 green turtles, were exported from Queensland.
Moreover, the animals were reported to occur in large numbers in the Moreton
Bay area, despite the increasing harvest (Stevens, 1902, p967). During the first
decade of the twentieth century, more extensive exploitation of green turtles was
prompted by the increasing demand in London for turtle products. In 1906, the
Inspector of Fisheries acknowledged 'the valuable but as yet undeveloped trade
in turtle' and the shipment of sun-dried turtle meat between Queensland and
London (Stevens, 1906, p1419). Holmes (1933, cited in Limpus, 1978, p220)
stated: 'One year several hundred [green] turtles were exported shell and all to the
London market, and I believe they were a feature of the Lord Mayor's banquet'.
During that decade, green turtles were also harvested from Masthead Island, in
the Capricorn-Bunker Group (Figure 6.4) .