The newly launched turtle workshop is the brainchild of the EAWST founder Volker Bassen. It is well-known that countless turtles get caught in fishermen’s large mesh nylon drift nets and meet their death by drowning. As well as turtles, a host of other marine creatures meet a similar fate. These nets can be several hundreds of metres long and can cause decades of severe damage to the aquatic ecosystem.

It is important to note at outset that these nets have been used for years by fishermen along the Kenya coast. One net costs at least Ksh 50,000. The disadvantage of using these nets is that the fishermen can only use them at night and moreover when there is no moon. In practice that limits them to 2 weeks per month.

Furthermore, because they set the nets in the evening and collect them in the early morning, any fish caught in the early evening will not be fresh by the time it gets to the end-buyer. Many hotels reject the fish resulting in a loss of income to the fishermen who end up drying the fish and eating it themselves. In turn this causes the fishermen and their families all manner of health problems. To compound the situation, these nets will frequently become detached from their marker buoys and the fisherman will then have lost his most essential piece of equipment. Meanwhile the net itself becomes a “ghost net”, one of the most destructive weapons to be let loose on our fragile coral reefs. These ghost nets continue to fish for several decades. They catch turtles and whale sharks as they drift with the current. These creatures sink to the bottom with the net and there the net trawls the reef for lobster and fish, damaging the coral in the process. As the fish rot, they bloat and the net floats to the surface where the whole destructive process repeats itself again and again.

These drift nets are the single most serious threat to Kenya’s whale shark and turtle population. As a result of this, the EAWST has launched the turtle project. It has set up a work shop with fishermen making fibre-glass turtle shell lamps. These are beautifully crafted and look enchanting on the wall. They are sold in gift-shops and hotels. With the proceeds, the EAWST buys the nets from the fishermen. The fishermen are then taught how to fish using more environmentally friendly fishing methods, specifically using bottom long-lines. This method of fishing is carried out in much deeper water and targets different deep water species. This way the coral reef is left untouched, meaning that the juveniles can grow and continue to have a productive life cycle. The fishermen can fish throughout the month and the fish is much fresher when it reaches the consumer.

The fishermen have been very enthusiastic about the project and the EAWST has found it extremely rewarding to work with them.

Fibre-Glass Turtle Shell Lamps