The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) has issued an infographic in their fight to stop sea turtle farming aimed at the Cayman Islands Turtle Farm – see attached.

Under a heading, “Change needed for sea turtles” they state:

“The practices of the Cayman Turtle Farm are devastating to the sea turtles being housed there and to the wild turtles in the sea.

“WSPA’s solution is for the farm to be turned into a sea turtle rehabilitation and education facility like the Kélonia Observatory for Marine Turtles refuge on the island of Réunion. This center mirrors the conditions of a turtles’ natural habitat and promotes eco-tourism.”

By way of graphics and words they show two comparisons.

On the left we have ‘Cayman Turtle Farm’ – A losing proposition [except they have a misspelling – ‘propositon”].

On the right we have ‘Kélonia Observatory for Marine Turtles’ – A model for success’.

The infographic is very well done and, of course, has all the plusses on the right hand side and all the minuses on the left.

At the bottom of the infographic there is mention of ‘Tourist survey respondents’ in one place and ‘Tourists in WSPA 2012 survey’ without providing any details of the survey – how it was conducted, questions asked, number of persons surveyed, etc.

This is what it says:

60% [6 orange figures 4 black figures]. Cruise passengers who visited the Cayman Turtle Farm in past three years were not made aware of the potential health risks associated with touching the turtles and would not have touched them had they known.

90% [9 orange figures 1 black figure]. Tourists in WSPA 2012 survey who said they would not participate in an activity if they learned the animals involved were being mistreated.

88% [9 orange figures 1 black figure]. Cruise passengers who feel it’s the responsibility of cruise lines to provide information about any known health risks associated with the Cayman Turtle Farm before they visit.

80% [8 orange figures 2 black figures]. Tourism survey respondents who would pay a $4 surcharge to help improve conditions at an attraction that houses animals.

I wonder, though, how the 90% of tourists, who said they wouldn’t participate in an activity if they learned the animals involved were being mistreated, meaning they wouldn’t have visited the Turtle Farm and paid the admission fee, would have had 80% of them pay a $4 surcharge to help improve the conditions there? If they had been told about the conditions they wouldn’t have gone!

You can find out more by going to stopseaturtlefarm.org. Nowhere on that site are there any details of this survey posted.

Interestingly, even though we were the very first media house in the Cayman Islands, to publish the WSPA’s damaging report they publish the links to local stories from CITN/Cayman27, CNS and Caymanian Compass. They are conveniently silent about us because we published both sides. We don’t exist.

Until this release was sent to us today, most surprisingly I might add, we were cut off from their press releases and we had to ‘find’ them ourselves. This was after we had a very cordial personal meeting with them, told them we didn’t agree 100% with them, pointed out a distortion in the ‘facts’ we knew (and they knew) was incorrect, and told them it was silly of them to do so because it then casts doubts on everything else they had done.

iNews Cayman will ALWAYS give both sides of a story. When we tried THREE times to get the Turtle Farm to call us back to answer our questions and they didn’t we told you. It was silly of them and hurt their cause. It did not change the Editor’s personal views.

Note: Kélonia is a public aquarium and observatory specialising in Marine turtles in Saint-Leu, Réunion, France. It was built on the site of a a former Turtle Ranch and purposes guided visits and educational workshops. Kélonia also participates on different research programmes on marine turtles. These include migratory studies, monitoring populations, genetics, etc. It also has a turtle clinic.

For more on Kelonia go to: http://www.kelonia.org/fr/