The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles: Archie Carr and the Origins of Conservation Biology

331 Pages·2007·4.67 MB·English

by  Frederick Rowe Davis

The Man Who Saved
Sea Turtles
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The Man Who
Saved Sea Turtles
Archie Carr and the Origins of
Conservation Biology
Frederick Rowe Davis
1
2007
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis,Frederick Rowe,1965–
The man who saved sea turtles:Archie Carr and the origins of conservation
biology/Frederick Rowe Davis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-19-531077-1
1.Carr,Archie Fairly,1909–1987 2.Herpetologists—United States—Biography.
3.Sea turtles. I.Title.
QL31.C34D38 2007
590.92—dc22 [B] 2006029638
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free recycled paper
For my son,
Spenser Lake Davis
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Foreword
David Ehrenfeld
Archie Carr,one of the greatest biologists of the twentieth century,played a
leading part in finding a new and critical role for natural history and sys-
tematics in a post-1950s world that had come to be dominated by the glamorous
science of molecular biology.Coincident with the rise of molecular biology,a
growing popular awareness of species extinction has been accepted as a grim fact
of modern life.This awareness was brought home by scientists like Rachel
Carson,who explained the extinction crisis in a way that the public could under-
stand and remember.What Carr did,using endangered sea turtles as his model,
was to show that successful conservation,the next step after becoming aware of
the extinction problem,was utterly dependent on knowing the life histories and
the evolved relationships and species classification of the creatures you were
trying to save.
The story of Carr’s life is both fascinating and uplifting—from his childhood
passion for reptiles and other animals,to his dramatic talent and linguistic abilities
(translating for African-American speakers of Gullah and Geechee on the docks
of Savannah),to his emergence as the world’s greatest authority on turtles and a
pioneering conservationist.Archie Carr was that rare scientist who could com-
municate with the public as easily as with his fellow biologists.A truly charismatic
figure,even the Central American turtle poachers whom he was effectively and
openly putting out of business liked and respected him,as indeed he enjoyed their
company.Part of his ability to reach out to people was based on his remarkable
ear for language and dialect;he once delivered a series of lectures on evolution to
a Costa Rican radio audience in flawless Spanish.
Carr’s scientific and popular writings were as compelling, elegant, and
wryly humorous as his speech.Here is an extract from his Handbook of Turtles,
foreword
which won the Daniel Giraud Elliot medal of the U.S.National Academy of
Sciences in 1952:
The first of the innovations made by the stem reptiles was in a way the
most extraordinary and ambitious of all.... By a cryptic series of
changes,few of which are illustrated in the fossil record,there evolved a
curious and improbable creature [with] a bent and twisted body encased
in a bony box the like of which had never been seen....The new animal
was a turtle.Having once performed the spectacular feat of getting its
girdles inside its ribs,it lapsed into a state of complacent conservatism
that has been the chief mark of the breed ever since.
Another example of Carr’s engaging style comes from his popular work The
Windward Road (1955),about Caribbean nature and culture:“It was dawn and
thewind was down.Curls of mist rose and drifted,thinned and dissolved into the
calm confusion of sea and air....The cook rested his belly and elbows on therail
and looked sleepily after the catboat sliding away in the fog,leaving behind it the
only streak of difference between sky and water.”
In this book you will come to know,as I did during the exciting years when
I was his student and friend,a unique and inspiring human being.Frederick Davis
has done a fine job of capturing the intertwined personal,public,and scientific
lives of the complex,extraordinary person who,if anyone deserves the title,really
was the man who saved sea turtles.
viii
Preface
It is so dark that I cannot see Sebastian Troëng, who is the Caribbean
Conservation Corporation’s scientific director and our team leader,or any of
the other people in the group.I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.Nor
can I seem to shake off the sleep I’ve recently left for my midnight to 4 a.m.shift.
Dressed entirely in dark clothes, we speak in hushed whispers, barely audible
above the crashing of the surf.Each of us has come to Tortuguero with one ques-
tion in mind,Will we find turtles? Sebastian has pointed out the turtle tracks in
the sand, and he demonstrates how to tell the direction of the tracks by feel.
Somehow he discerns a second set returning to the water.We start to move down
the beach again,theoretically at the surf line,but my soaked socks and shoes indi-
cate we’re below it.Just when I ease into a comfortable pace,Sebastian freezes,
oblivious to the minor train wreck that results from the rest of us bumping into
one another.“Can you see the turtle?”he asks.At first,I can barely differentiate
the shell of the turtle from the driftwood,but gradually I manage to see it.It’s a
green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas).We stand motionless until the turtle passes by.
Just a little farther along the beach,Sebastian locates the first nest of the night.
We set to work by attaching the tags (a sequential set,one to each flipper),meas-
uring the carapace (straight and curved),and check for abnormalities (especially
fibropapillomas).Throughout the process,we stay behind the turtle where our
red-tinted light won’t disturb her as she completes the nesting process.I try to
write the measurements according to the guidelines,while the turtle inadvertently
pummels me with flipperfuls of black sand as she covers the nest.Then it starts to
rain.Thunder and lightning follow.No one wants to hold the 6-foot-long alu-
minum calipers,now respectfully called the “lightning rod.”At that moment,it
dawns on me that if Archie Carr were with us,he would be having a great time.