A few weeks after the Outside article was published, I received a letter from Dr. Peter Pritchard, vice-president for science and research at the Florida Audubon Society. Dr. Pritchard, having recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Escobilla, wrote: "When I was there in late November, they were still killing 500-700 turtles per day, and every one was a female contain­ing eggs.... The local PIOSA jefe told me that the story behind the opening cere­mony of the research facility and the subsequent draining of the tanks was simply that the plumbing system was not ready for dedication day, so they had hand-filled the system just for the cere­mony, then emptied it again. They still did not have their plumbing system in operation when I was there, but they were 'working on it'.... I, like you, was revolted by what I saw....The feds say that they will clamp down and close the season if the turtles show a diminution in numbers. Unfortunately, it may be too late then—the Kemp's ridley, on the other coast, has shown no recovery even after a decade of full protection...Open season during the breeding time is a sure recipe for disaster."

"Shame" was reprinted in the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Marine Turtle Newsletter. Dr. Pritchard wrote a commentary, and I quote from him again, not only because his comments are co­gent, but because it will later be important to know exactly where he stands. Reflecting on his visit to the slaughterhouse, Pritchard wrote, "I found the sight of the beautiful female ridleys, fresh from the sea, being bashed in with iron bars and deftly eviscerated, one after the other, 500 or more per day, a disgusting and de­moralizing sight, and I found the idea of creatures being butchered in this way when they were gathering to lay their eggs totally unacceptable, both emo­tionally and biologically."

Pritchard had questioned the director of the Mexican Department of Fisheries, who had, apparently, been quite frank. PIOSA, he said, had been allowed to fish during the breeding season, had been allowed such dangerously high quotas, because it would be logistically difficult and extremely expensive to field a small army of enforcement personnel in remote coastal Oaxaca. It was thought that if Suárez got the quotas he wanted, he would, in turn, see that those eggs laid naturally or buried at the lab would be adequately protected from poachers. Pritchard's commentary went on to ques­tion the concept of the lab itself and mentioned that the Suárez /PIOSA opera­tion constituted the largest butchery of turtles in the world.

In the summer of 1978 ABC aired its American Sportsman segment on the plight of the olive ridley. Producer/director John Wilcox and associate producer Bob Nixon had put together a, powerful and emo­tional documentary. It was all there on film: the lab with thousands of turtles in the tanks and the media standing around looking suitably impressed, followed by empty tanks only two days later. There was a final shot of the dump, that foul boneyard, and all those eggs, the next generation, rotting away in that maggot-­infested heap.

A small groundswell of public support seemed to be building, and the Environmental Defense Fund took good and proper advantage of it. They threat­ened to sue the United States federal government: The EDF demanded that the olive ridley and two other species of sea turtle be declared a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Threat of suit was enough. The olive ridley was declared to be endangered. The effect of the action was to prohibit importation of any of the protected turtles or of products derived from them.