In Central America, sea turtle eggs are a popular cuisine dish. The eggs are hugely and secretly harvested onto tables, leaving the sea turtles listed as threatened. Yet we simply do not have the ability to continuously guard large beaches. Scientist Kim Williams was thinking hard when she had an "aha" moment: How about placing a fake egg containing a GPS tracker.
That's how the special eggs come in. To build them, Williams and colleagues used a 3D printer. Then, they fixed in the smallest GPS tracking devices. As mother turtles laid their eggs under cover of night, the researchers slipped a single spy egg into each nest. Once they are covered in sand from the real ones, "it's very difficult to tell the difference", says Williams.
Of the 101 spy eggs, 25 were taken away while six of them were quickly discovered and left on the beach. The team received tracking data with the farthest egg travelling 137 kilometers inland and stopping at a local supermarket. The spy egg sent its final signal the next day from a personal house, suggesting that the research team had tracked the eggs all the way. The researchers stress that the tracker is not a way to catch local thieves: many of whom are living in poverty, but rather a tool to better understand how the deal goes.
Still stopping stealing is not as simple as handing the tracking data over to the police. Across Central America, trade in sea turtle eggs can be legally ambiguous. In Costa Rica: for example, it is illegal to steal and sell sea turtle eggs but buying them is not a crime. It is not black and white. Meanwhile, local support is in need above all. "It, but not tracking with eggs, is the real meat and potatoes of conservation, " says Williams.
