Turtle farming - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Turtle farming is the practice of raising turtle

Turtle

Turtles are reptiles of the order Testudines , characterised by a special bony or cartilaginous shell developed from their ribs that acts as a shield...

s and tortoise

Tortoise

Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...

s of various species commercially. Raised animals are sold for use as gourmet food, traditional medicine ingredients, or as pets. Some farms also sell young animals to other farms, either as breeding stock, or more commonly to be raised there to a larger size for further resale.

Turtle farmers worldwide raise primarily freshwater turtles (primarily, Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle

Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle

The Chinese softshell turtle , formerly known as Trionyx sinensis, was described by Wiegmann in 1835. The species is also referred to as the Asiatic Soft Shelled Turtle....

s as a food source and Sliders

Trachemys

Trachemys is a genus of turtles belonging to the family Emydidae.-Species:*Trachemys adiutrix - Maranhão slider*Trachemys callirostris - Colombian slider*Trachemys callirostris callirostris - Colombian slider...

and Cooter Turtles

Pseudemys

Pseudemys is a genus of large, herbivorous, freshwater turtles of the eastern United States. They are often referred to as cooters, which stems from kuta, the word for turtle in the Bambara and Malinké languages, brought to America by African slaves....

for the pet trade); therefore, turtle farming is usually classified as aquaculture

Aquaculture

Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the...

. However, some terrestrial tortoises (e.g. Cuora mouhotii) are also raised on farms for the pet trade.

It is believed that there have only been three serious attempts to farm sea turtle

Sea turtle

Sea turtles are marine reptiles that inhabit all of the world's oceans except the Arctic.-Distribution:...

s.
Only one of them (in Cayman Islands

Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...

) continues, with a strong tourism component.
The one in Australia's Torres Strait Islands

Torres Strait Islands

The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands which lie in Torres Strait, the waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea but Torres Strait Island known and Recognize as Nyumaria.The islands are mostly part of...

folded down after a few years of operation, and the one in Réunion

Réunion

Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...

has been converted to a public aquarium .

Geography

Japan

Japan is said to be the pioneer of soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) farming, with the first farm started by Mr. Kurajiro Hattori in Fukagawa

Fukagawa (Tokyo)

is a region in Kōtō ward of Tokyo metropolis, Japan. It is one of the representative shitamachi of Tokyo. Formerly, it was a ward of the historical Tokyo City. Its postal code is 135-0033....

near Tokyo in 1866. Initially stocked with wild-caught animals, the farm started breeding them in 1875.
By the early 20th century Hattori's farm had about 13.6 hectares of turtle ponds; it was reported to produce 82,000 eggs in 1904, and some 60,000 animals of market size in 1907.

According to the report of the Japanese zoologist Kakichi Mitsukuri

Kakichi Mitsukuri

was a Japanese zoölogist, born at Edo. In 1873 he came to the United States, where he received the Ph.D. degree from Yale in 1879 and from Johns Hopkins in 1883. He was appointed professor in the college of science of the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1882 and councilor of the university in 1893...

, who conducted a significant amount of research at Hattori's farm in the late 19th and early 20th century, the main food supplied to the turtles were crushed bivalve mollusks, Mactra
Mactra
Mactra is a genus of medium-sized marine bivalve mollusks or clams, commonly known as trough shells or duck clams. Mactra is the type genus within the family Mactridae....

veneriformis (shiofuki, in Japanese), from Tokyo Bay

Tokyo Bay

is a bay in the southern Kantō region of Japan. Its old name was .-Geography:Tokyo Bay is surrounded by the Bōsō Peninsula to the east and the Miura Peninsula to the west. In a narrow sense, Tokyo Bay is the area north of the straight line formed by the on the Miura Peninsula on one end and on...

. This was supplemented with by-products of fish processing and sericulture

Sericulture

Sericulture, or silk farming, is the rearing of silkworms for the production of raw silk.Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, Bombyx mori is the most widely used and intensively studied. According to Confucian texts, the discovery of silk production by B...

as well as boiled wheat. The farm turtles lived in a symbiotic relationship with carp

Carp

Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. The cypriniformes are traditionally grouped with the Characiformes, Siluriformes and Gymnotiformes to create the superorder Ostariophysi, since these groups have certain...

and eels, which were raised in the same ponds. The fish stirred up the mud, and the shy turtles felt more comfortable foraging in turbid water,

Hattori's company has survived into the 21st century, as the Hattori-Nakamura Soft-Shelled Turtle Farm, operating in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture

Shizuoka Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region on Honshu island. The capital is the city of Shizuoka.- History :Shizuoka prefecture was formed from the former Tōtōmi, Suruga and Izu provinces.The area was the home of the first Tokugawa Shogun...

. According to a 1991 report, Japan's turtle farm industry continued to be mostly based in central Japan, but was expanding to the warmer southern parts of the country.

China

The majority of world's turtle farms are probably located in China. According to a study published in 2007,
over a thousand turtle farms operated in China.

A later report by the same team (Shi Haitao, James F. Parham, et al.), published in January 2008, was based on an attempt to survey all 1,499 turtle farms that were registered with the appropriate authorities of the People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

(namely, the Endangered Species Import and Export Management Office, and the Forestry Bureaus of individual provinces). The farms were mostly located in China's southern provinces of Guangdong

Guangdong

Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...

, Guangxi

Guangxi

Guangxi, formerly romanized Kwangsi, is a province of southern China along its border with Vietnam. In 1958, it became the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, a region with special privileges created specifically for the Zhuang people.Guangxi's location, in...

, Hainan

Hainan

Hainan is the smallest province of the People's Republic of China . Although the province comprises some two hundred islands scattered among three archipelagos off the southern coast, of its land mass is Hainan Island , from which the province takes its name...

, and Hunan

Hunan

' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...

, although more recent sources indicate Zhejiang

Zhejiang

Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...

as particularly important.
Some of them have been operating since the 1980s, the industry steadily growing since.
According to the responses obtained from 684 of those farms, these farms had the total herd of more than 300 million animals, and sold over 128 million turtles each year, with the total weight of about 93,000 tons. Extrapolating from this sample, the researchers estimated that about 300 million farm-raised turtles are sold annually by China's registered turtle farms, worth (presumably, at the wholesale prices) around US$750 million. They note that a large number of unregistered farms exist as well.

According to more recent Chinese statistics, annual production just of the Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle

Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle

The Chinese softshell turtle , formerly known as Trionyx sinensis, was described by Wiegmann in 1835. The species is also referred to as the Asiatic Soft Shelled Turtle....

amounted to 204,000 tons in 2008.

The most common species raised by Chinese turtle farmers is the Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle

Chinese Soft-shelled Turtle

The Chinese softshell turtle , formerly known as Trionyx sinensis, was described by Wiegmann in 1835. The species is also referred to as the Asiatic Soft Shelled Turtle....

(Pelodiscus sinensis), accounting for over 97% of all reported sales, both in terms of head count (124.8 million in the 684-farm sample) and weight. Large-scale production of this species appears to have been successful in satisfying China gourmets' demand for its meat, which has been reflected in the price drop: while in the mid-1990s wild-caught soft-shelled turtles retailed for CNY 500 per Chinese pound

Catty

The catty , symbol 斤, is a traditional Chinese unit of mass used across East and Southeast Asia, notably for weighing food and other groceries in some wet markets, street markets, and shops. Related units include the picul, equal to 100 catties, and the tael, which is of a catty. A stone is a...

or jin (500 g), and farm-raised ones at over CNY 200 / Chinese pound,
by 1999 the price for farm-raised soft-shelled turtles dropped to CNY 60 per Chinese pound, and by 2009, to merely CNY 15-16 (around US $2) per Chinese pound.
A variety of other species are farmed as well, including the rare Cuora trifasciata
Cuora trifasciata
Golden coin turtle or Chinese three-striped box turtle is a species of turtle endemic to southern China.The species is distributed in China...

, fetching a hefty price (almost US $1,800 per turtle, as opposed to around $6.50 for a common Pelodiscus sinensis, or $80 for a Cuora mouhotii sold to pet trade) due to its rarity and purported medicinal value.

In a report from a Tunchang County

Tunchang County

Tunchang County is an administrative district in Hainan, the People's Republic of China. It is one of four counties of Hainan. Its postal code is 571600, and in 1999 its population was 250,059 people....

, Hainan

Hainan

, turtle farm, published by James F. Parham and Shi Haitao in 2000, the researchers give a general idea of what such an enterprise looks like. According to the owner, the farm, established in 1983, had some 50,000 animals of over 50 different aquatic and terrestrial species. The majority (30,000) were the common Pelodiscus sinensis.

There were also 7,000 to 8,000 of Mauremys mutica
Mauremys mutica
The Yellow pond turtle , is a species of turtle in the family Geoemydidae . It is found in China , Japan , Taiwan, and northern and central Vietnam and possibly adjacent Laos.It is a parent of several...

, and at least 1,000 of the prized Cuora trifasciata.
The adult turtles lived in an 8-hectare outdoor breeding area, while the young ones were kept in indoor raising ponds.
Hybridization between various turtle species often occurs on the farms. This has often been unintentional (because various species frequently are not segregated; this was especially characteristic of the early days of the industry). Sometimes, however, hybridization is encouraged, e.g. to produce the hybrids of the valuable Cuora trifasciata (the Golden Coin Turtle) and the more common Mauremys mutica
Mauremys mutica
The Yellow pond turtle , is a species of turtle in the family Geoemydidae . It is found in China , Japan , Taiwan, and northern and central Vietnam and possibly adjacent Laos.It is a parent of several...

; these hybrid turtles, apparently known as Mauremys iversoni, can be sold to retail customers as if they were true pure-blood Golden Coin Turtles.

South-east Asia

Pelodiscus sinensis is fairly extensively farmed in Thailand as well, with the (ca. the late 1990s) estimate of about 6 million turtles hatching on Thai farms annually.

Turtle farming exists in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

as well, at least on a family farm scale. As early as 1993, researchers noted the existence of several hundred families near Hai Duong

Hai Duong

Hải Dương is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of Hai Duong province. Its name is Sino-Vietnamese for "ocean" .- Geography :Hai Duong city is bordered to the northeast by the Nam Sách District and Thanh Hà District...

raising various amphibians and reptiles, including turtles. By 2004, companies herds of several tens of thousand of soft-shell turtles were in operation near Ha Tinh

Ha Tinh

Hà Tĩnh is a city in Vietnam. It is the capital of the Ha Tinh province, in Vietnam's north central coast....

; the operators were said to have studied the turtle farming techniques in Thailand.

United States

Turtle farming in the United States started in the early 1900s, with farms in Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

and North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

raising diamondback terrapin

Diamondback terrapin

The diamondback terrapin or simply terrapin, is a species of turtle native to the brackish coastal swamps of the eastern and southern United States. It belongs to the monotypic genus, Malaclemys...

s, which is considered a delicacy in those parts. However, by the late 20th century few turtles were raised for food in the United States, and American restaurants mostly relied on wild-caught turtles.

Since the 1960s, a number of turtle farms have operated in Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

and Louisiana

Louisiana

Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...

. According to Louisiana agricultural scientists, just that state has around 60 turtle farms, producing some 10 million turtles a year.
(In 2004, it was reported that there were 72 turtle farms licensed by the State of Louisiana.) The industry is said to have started "70-some years" ago (i.e., in the 1930s) with farmers collecting eggs laid by wild turtles, getting them to hatch, and selling the hatchlings as pets.

The US turtle industry suffered a serious setback in 1975, when the US Food and Drug Administration

Food and Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...

prohibited interstate trade in small turtles (those smaller than 4 inches across), in order to prevent spreading salmonella

Salmonella

Salmonella is a genus of rod-shaped, Gram-negative, non-spore-forming, predominantly motile enterobacteria with diameters around 0.7 to 1.5 µm, lengths from 2 to 5 µm, and flagella which grade in all directions . They are chemoorganotrophs, obtaining their energy from oxidation and reduction...

infection. Although the ban has remained in force ever since, Louisiana farmers have adopted an anti-salmonella prophylactic treatment regimen developed at Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University

Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...

by Ronald Siebeling and later enhanced by Mark Mitchell, and focused on raising turtles for export to foreign countries (to which the FDA ban presumably does not apply).

An idea of the volume of the US turtle industry can be obtained from the data recorded when some of their turtles are exported. Although the cumulative export data include both farmed and wild-caught turtles, the "farmed" component is usually predominant. According to a study by the World Chelonian Trust, 97% out of 31.8 million turtles and tortoises that were exported out of the U.S. over a three-year period (November 4, 2002 - November 26, 2005) were farm-raised. It has been estimated (presumably, over the same 2002-2005 period) that about 47% of the US turtle exports go to People's Republic of China

People's Republic of China

(predominantly to Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

), another 20% to Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

, and 11% to Mexico.
Over one-half of all turtles exported from the USA over the study period were Trachemys scripta
Trachemys scripta
Trachemys scripta, better known as the pond slider, is a common, medium-sized semi-aquatic turtle. There are three subspecies of sliders. The most recognizable subspecies is the red-eared slider , which is popular in the pet trade. This subspecies has been introduced to other parts of the world...

( 17,524,786 individuals: primarily Trachemys scripta elegans (Red-ear Sliders) - 15,181,688 individuals, as well as other Trachemys scripta
Trachemys scripta
Trachemys scripta, better known as the pond slider, is a common, medium-sized semi-aquatic turtle. There are three subspecies of sliders. The most recognizable subspecies is the red-eared slider , which is popular in the pet trade. This subspecies has been introduced to other parts of the world...

subspecies).

Caribbean

A sea turtle

Sea turtle

Sea turtles are marine reptiles that inhabit all of the world's oceans except the Arctic.-Distribution:...

farm operates in the West Bay

West Bay, Cayman Islands

West Bay is a district located on Grand Cayman Island in the British West Indies.-Politics:West Bay is one of the two largest electoral districts on Grand Cayman, along with George Town...

district of Cayman Islands

Cayman Islands

. They raise Green Sea Turtle

Green Sea Turtle

The Green sea turtle or green turtle is a large sea turtle of the family Cheloniidae. It is the only species in the genus Chelonia. Its range extends throughout tropical and subtropical seas around the world, with two distinct populations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...

s, primarily for their meat, a traditional food in Caymanian culture which was increasingly scarce in the wild. The farm, established in 1968, can produce upwards of 1800 turtles a year, however, some of the farmed turtles are released. Between 1980 and 2006, the farm released some 30,600 turtles to the wild, and these individuals have subsequently been found throughout the Caribbean. Presently, the facility's "vision statement" is "to be the Cayman Islands’ premier tourism attraction".

Due to the lack of CITES certification, turtle products cannot be exported outside of the Cayman Islands and the United Kingdom. However, as the farm notes on its web site. "even the sale of turtle meat has a positive conservation impact because it greatly reduces poaching in the wild, which is often otherwise uncontrollable, both in terms of numbers and indiscriminate in terms of age and sex".

Effect on wild populations

Conservation experts display somewhat ambivalent view toward the effect of turtle farming on the wild turtle populations, many of which are endangered. As the conservation expert Peter Paul van Dijk noted, the farmed turtles gradually replace wild-caught ones in the open markets of China, with the percentage of farm-raised individuals in the "visible" trade growing from around 30% in 2000 to around 70% ca. 2007. On the other hand, he and other experts caution that turtle farming creates extra pressure on the wild populations, as farmers commonly believe in the superiority of wild-caught breeding stock and place a premium on wild-caught breeders, which may create an incentive for turtle hunters to seek and catch the very last remaining wild specimens of some species.
Even the potentially appealing concept of raising turtles at a farm to release into the wild (as done with some numbers of sea turtles at the Caymans establishment) is questioned by some veterinarians who have had some experience with farm operations. They caution that this may introduce into the wild populations infectious diseases that occur on the farm but have not (yet) been occurring in the wild.

Geography

Japan

China

South-east Asia

United States

Caribbean

Effect on wild populations

See also