Impacts on marine turtles - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 80

factory on North West Island (Golding, 1979, pp48-9). His wife, Sarah Owens,
wrote: 'To make one ton of extract it takes 440 turtles at 12 a day or 36 days. 100
cases of soup takes 228 turtles at 8 cases a day or 36 days' (Limpus, 1978, p221;
Golding, 1979, pp50-1). Merchants in London reported that the demand for that
turtle soup was unreliable, however, and in 1911 Stevens reported that there was
little demand for turtles beyond the Sydney market, a situation that prevailed
throughout the following decade, in spite of an apparent abundance of turtles in
the waters of Queensland (Stevens, 1910, p927; 1911, p1192; 1913, p1033; 1920,
p570). In 1919, Stevens (1919, p342) acknowledged that 'only a few' turtles were
harvested due to insufficient demand. However, turtle-soup production at North
West Island increased during the 1920s; by May 1924, the Barrier Reef Trading
Company had constructed a canning works, wharf and rail track at North West
Island (Golding, 1979). The scale of that operation was unprecedented in the
Great Barrier Reef: during 1924-1925, 1,220 turtles were processed at North
West Island and the annual output of the factory was approximately 36,000 tins
(Forrester, 1925, p295; Barrett, 1930, p375) . 5 In 1925, the Australian Turtle
Company Limited commenced another operation at Heron Island, and in 1925-
1926 the combined harvest of the two factories was 2,500 green turtles (Forrester,
1926, p929; Golding, 1979, pp61-2) . 6
The industry was intensive: a daily catch of about 25 female turtles yielded
around 900 tins of turtle soup, with most of the harvest occurring in the nesting
season from November to January. In addition to soup, tortoise-shell was sold,
turtle shells and bones were used for the production of fertiliser, and turtle eggs
were sold to biscuit manufacturers (Musgrave and Whitley, 1926; Napier, 1938,
facing p136; QGTB, 1931; Roughley, 1936). In 1926, Forrester (1926) reported
that regulation of the industry was necessary, and Musgrave and Whitley (1926)
expressed concerns that the excessive harvest of nesting female green turtles at
the two islands threatened the species with extinction. During 1926 and 1927,
2,475 turtles were taken, and 1,622 animals were caught the following year.
Figure 6.5 indicates the large catches made between 1925 and 1928, when the
equivalent of 136,000 twelve-ounce tins of turtle soup were produced at North
West Island; at least 33,000 tins of soup were produced from 435 turtles during
1926-1929 at Heron Island (Forrester, 1927, p953; 1928, p1185; 1929, p953;
Dick, 1930, p39). In addition to those catches, Barrett (1930, pp374-5) stated
that turtles were found in abundance at Masthead Island, and green turtles were
also taken from that island for the manufacture of turtle soup.
By 1929, green turtle catches in the Capricorn-Bunker Group had declined
markedly. Several factors explain this contraction of the industry. First, as Limpus
(1978) acknowledged, a shortage of reliable freshwater supplies on the cays
hindered the boiling-down of the animals; other authors also acknowledged the
problem of inadequate freshwater supplies, including the fact that Pisonia leaves
contaminated the tanks at Heron Island, resulting in brackish water supplies
(Musgrave and Whitley, 1926; Golding, 1979). Second, the quality of the
tinned product was poor, as J. Huxham (1925, p15; 1928, p678), the Queensland