(Excellent Description of Wide-open Turtle meat Market down to how to
cook it in the Phillipines)
Cebu City: GMA NEWS (Manila, Philippines) 5/21/12 Business
is brisk, judging from the throng of people and cars parked outside this
makeshift eatery in Pasil, a shoreline barangay.
The customers, some in long sleeves and tie, do not mind the heat and
the dishevelled slum area. They are here for one reason: To eat their
favorite stewed dish of sea turtle or pawikan, an endangered species whose
hunting, sale and killing have been banned by law since 2001.
The Wildlife Conservation Act, or Republic Act No. 9147, penalizes
violators with a fine of
up to P100,000 and imprisonment of up to one year.
The pawikan appears on the list of the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), having become endangered
because of poaching, slaughter, blast fishing, illegal trade and pollution.
A signatory of the CITES, the Philippines, through the Protected Areas
and Wildlife Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, has
implemented the Pawikan Conservation Project nationwide.
Animal welfare groups, meanwhile, consider the whole month of May as the
Month of the Ocean, which promotes conservation and protection of sea
creatures.
But Basilisa Piaquinto, head of the Protected Area and Wildlife (PAW) of
the Community
Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) here, expressed
helplessness over the sale of the contraband in Pasil.
Vendors, mostly ambulant, have wised up and now sell pawikan meat
already cut up, making it difficult for authorities to tell it apart from other meat, she said.
And eateries are temporary structures that are easy to dismantle, allowing them
to elude authorities.
Piaquinto said the vendors themselves know they are violating the law,
but the demand for pawikan meat has kept the trade going.
Often eaten with corn grits and sold for P60 a bowl, the stewed pawikan
is commonly believed to be an aphrodisiac, explaining its popularity among men.
“People come here because they believe that pawikan is like Viagra and
some also come just for the thrill and curiosity of eating an endangered
species,” said Henry Lumanang, who has lived for 15 years on Rallos Street
where the eatery is located.
The sale of the marine species in the neighborhood is an open secret
known even to policemen, who are among the eatery’s customers, he said.
Elinore Malagar, a student from the University of San Jose Recoletos,
visited the makeshift restaurant, located less than 300 meters from the nearest
police station, a parish church and barangay hall, in mid-April after she was
told that pawikan meat was being sold openly.
When she got to the place at 11.a.m., a handful of customers were
already eating at the tables housed under a tent with tarpaulin roof and two
large cauldrons containing a steaming hot stew had obviously just come off the
wood-fired stove.
Beside the cauldrons was a plastic pail that contained the raw meat,
four flippers and the head of a sea turtle. “I was shocked and could not
believe what I saw inside the pail,” Malagar said.
A man in his fifties who was preparing the exotic dish said the eatery
gets its daily supply of pawikan meat from middlemen who buy the turtle meat
from fishermen from islets in Bohol.
The merchandise enters through the small port in the barangay and is
sold for P250 to P350 a kilo, dpending on the supply, he said.
But the deliveries are not easily detected by authorities because the
contraband is stored inside a styropor box and covered with fish to camouflage,
unlike in the past when live sea turtles were delivered to the barangay, the
man said.
“Now they deliver the meat; that is why it is hard to detect,” he said
in the dialect.
The supply of pawikan meat is continuous because of the sea turtle’s
nature to lie on the seashore where it dries its carapace or top shell in the
sun, makes a nest, and lays eggs, making it easy to capture, the man said. The
pawikan would also get accidentally trapped in the fishermen’s nets.
The Pasil eatery cooks an average of 80 kilos of pawikan meat every day.
The dish is cooked in two batches—the first at 9 a.m., in time for customers
who start coming at 10. The second batch is prepared at 1 p.m. because by then
the 40 kilos of meat cooked in the morning would usually have been consumed.
VERA Files saw how the old man prepares the stew. He first sautés about
two kilos of tomatoes, garlic and onions in the big cauldron, then puts in the
pawikan meat and lets it simmer. Water is added and brought to a boil before
the man throws in a bunch of raw tamarind (sampaloc) to give the dish its sour
taste and finally two glasses of black beans (tausi) to give it the salty
taste.
The man explained that the pawikan meat he was cooking that day was
still young and weighed only six kilos. (A pawikan can weigh up to 200 kilos
depending on its age and size.) It took him less than an hour to finish
cooking because, he said, the meat from the young turtle is still tender. There
are days when it would take him an hour or two to cook the dish if the meat
that is delivered comes from a big sea turtle, he said.
CENRO’s Piaquinto said her office has looked into reports of pawikan
being sold in Barangay Pasil but has been unable to catch violators who, she
said, are ambulant. “(T)he reports could not pinpoint the exact location (of
the sellers) since they move around,”she said.
Piaquinto also said that it is hard to identify pawikan meat because it
looks like any other meat. “We need to have scientific basis in order to
establish the evidence, and we don't have the equipment needed,” she said.
Police seized last year 20 kilos of pawikan meat at the Pasil Port—only
because they got lucky.
The couriers hurriedly left when they saw law enforcers. If the
contraband had not been abandoned, police would have no idea it was pawikan
meat, Piaquinto said.
Philippines goes after sea turtle restaurants
Mon, May 21, 2012-The Philippines on Monday said it
would form a special task force to go after restaurants selling the meat of
protected sea turtles.
The eight-member team was created after news reports revealed the
proliferation of roadside restaurants in the central island of Cebu serving
dishes made from the government-protected marine animals.
"The task force is created to pursue and initiate an aggressive
protection and conservation movement of the endangered marine turtles which are
now on the verge of total depletion," regional environment chief Maximo
Dichoso said.
The team was instructed to investigate the trading, hunting, sale, and
killing of marine turtles in the area, the environment department said.
News reports said numerous small eateries in a coastal district of Cebu
City were serving dishes made from sea turtle.
Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama conceded that the practice had been going
on for a long time but there had been no concerted effort to stop it.
Those caught trading, hunting, collecting or killing sea turtles, which
are considered an endangered species, face a fine of 100,000 pesos ($2,350) and
one year in jail.
The discovery of Chinese fishermen catching sea turtles and other
protected marine species in the South China Sea last month triggered a
high-profile maritime standoff between Philippine and Chinese ships.
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