In 1977 there was an experiment underway at Escobilla, a deadly ex­periment involving the survival of an entire species of animal.

In previous years, harvesting of sea turtles during the nesting season had been prohibited, for good reason. In the days that precede the arribazón, female ridleys mass in the ocean, vulnerable, just beyond the breakers. There are thou­sands of them bobbing in the swells, as far as the eye can see. Sunlight glitters off their shells. At this time they are slow, nearly somnambulant, driven by instinct, and they are easily caught by divers.

The ban on harvesting turtles during the breeding season had been lifted in 1976, and in October of 1977 men were catching the turtles beyond the breakers, slaughtering them faster and more effi­ciently than ever before. Lifting the ban had been a controversial move. The turtles were listed in the 1975 reptile Red Data Book as endangered: "in danger of extinction and whose survival is unlikely if causal factors keep operating."

De la Vega had brought this situation to the attention of the media in 1976. The fishing company, PIOSA, and its director general, Antonio Suárez, were sensitive to the criticism. Instead of restoring the prohibition against harvesting, however, Suarez had picked up the lion's share of the tab for the construction of a labora­tory dedicated to the preservation of the olive ridley.

Here's the way the lab was supposed to work: As the turtles were slaughtered, eggs would be taken from the female's oviducts. These eggs would be buried in the sand or in styrofoam boxes filled with sand. There they would be protected from predators, such as domestic dogs and coyotes, not to mention those human jackals, the men who poach turtle eggs for profit.

The eggs fetch a good price in the marketplaces of Mexico's larger cities; ignorant and impotent men believe they are an aphrodisiac. Poachers, catering to that trade, will strip a beach of 100 percent of its eggs, and in consequence, leath­erback, green, and olive ridley turtles have all but disappeared from certain unprotected beaches. The poachers are organized and vicious. The new lab at Escobilla was named for Daniel Guevara, a lawman murdered by poachers in the course of his investigation of a major egg-smuggling ring.

Eggs from the slaughtered females would be concentrated in the area around the lab, protected by Mexican marines and PIOSA employees. As hatchlings emerged, they would be collected, put in large tanks, and fed until there were enough of them to be boated out and dumped beyond the breakers.

Protecting the eggs from poachers was a noble-enough idea, but a little reading about set turtles in the most elementary scientific texts indicates that there were several things wrong with the central concept of the lab. No one had any idea what the hatch rate would be from eggs taken out of the slaughtered females, only that it would be a fraction of that from eggs laid naturally. There was also a probability that the hatchlings, in captivity, would become "pen-happy," that once the swimming frenzy of the first day of birth had passed, they would wallow about indolently where dumped, there to be snapped up by predators or washed back onto the beach by the tide. Finally, whatever mechanism it is that causes ridleys to return to the beach of their birth to lay their eggs might be short-circuited.

There was one other thing wrong with this lab. It was a hoax.