Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing steadi­ly in its ef­fort to cease the slaugh­ter­ing of tur­tles af­ter Cab­i­net ap­proved an amend­ment of the Fish­eries Act ear­li­er this week. The amend­ment seeks to pro­tect Tur­tles and Tur­tle eggs un­der Sec­tion 4 Chap­ter 67:51 of the Act. Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the amend­ment was a land­mark piece of leg­is­la­tion which pro­hibits the killing, har­poon­ing and sale of tur­tles. Bharath made the dis­clo­sure as he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the com­mis­sion­ing of the up­grad­ed Clax­ton Bay Fish land­ing site yes­ter­day. He said: "I wish to an­nounce to you that ear­li­er this week I re­ceived Cab­i­net ap­proval for the amend­ment to the Pro­tec­tion of Tur­tle and Tur­tle Eggs Reg­u­la­tions."

He read the Act which stat­ed: "No per­son shall, at any time, kill, har­poon, catch or oth­er­wise take pos­ses­sion of any tur­tle, or pur­chase, sell, of­fer or ex­pose for sale or cause to be sold or of­fered for sale any tur­tle or tur­tle meat". He fur­ther ex­plained: "As you may be aware, Trinidad and To­ba­go holds the unique po­si­tion of hav­ing nest­ing pop­u­la­tions of five of the sev­en species of ma­rine tur­tles oc­cur­ring world­wide and has one of the largest nest­ing pop­u­la­tions of leatherback tur­tles in the world, sec­ond on­ly to Africa." Bharath said that all tur­tles were re­gard­ed as crit­i­cal­ly en­dan­gered world­wide ac­cord­ing to the Con­ven­tion on In­ter­na­tion­al Trade in En­dan­gered Species of Fau­na and Flo­ra (CITES) to which T&T was a par­ty. "What this there­fore means, mem­bers of the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty, is that no longer can tur­tles be con­sid­ered a "by-catch". It is our goal to fos­ter the sus­tain­able use and con­ser­va­tion of fish­eries re­sources, and we urge you to join us," Bharath said.