Endangered Species: "Diary of an Eco-Warrior"

Cuora Trifasciata

For the next few weeks, I stretched my per diem as far as it would go. Thankfully, I was in Southeast Asia where life comes cheap. 

I was doing background research for the show. That was the ruse to Animal Channel, anyway. My first line of enquiry was to pick up where my unfortunate predecessor had left off. I didn’t intend to get too close to whatever it was, as he was probably now feeding the fish at the bottom of a Ukranian tide-pool. Nevertheless, he had found something worth getting killed over.

Collins had been on the trail of a turtle farming operation that criss-crossed the globe. It was a pet project of his. Not because there is anything inherently wrong in turtle farming, although it is rather cruel how they bleed them alive and use their body parts for medicinal purposes. No, he was enraged by the trafficking of a far rarer breed: the Cuora Trifasciata. It’s meat may have tasted like the sole of a shoe, but its parts were considered a cure for a variety of ills. The highest potency of its kind. And part of the reason why it was heading toward endangered status.

Regular soft-shell turtles fetch a pittance, but the Cuora Trifasciata go for nearly $2,000 a turtle. That’s serious money in this part of the world. However, they are notoriously hard to farm and their livelihood was threatened. The farms themselves were predominantly in Thailand and China, but someone had recently put most of them out of business, and was doing it from somewhere else. I hadn’t yet discovered where, but they had an export hub located in Vietnam, which is where I was now. 

I pretended to be a tourist. A clumsy cover, I know, but I had little else at my disposal. This was a bare bones operation. Luckily, I found an American divorcee at my hotel, Nancy, who was only to happy to accompany me on my reconnaissance. I thought it would look better if we appeared to be a couple on our Summer vacation. If anybody asked, I would say I was a schoolteacher with a passion for photography. 

I told her that I was recently bereaved - a partial truth, perhaps. Playing the sympathy card always helps. She took a shine to me, but (thankfully) kept a respectful distance. I didn’t want her to get too close. It’s not that she wasn’t attractive. She had a healthy exuberance and a fit body, but I didn’t want to get embroiled in a holiday romance, when danger was in the air.

We spent an hour at the docks one afternoon, watching the ships come in and unload their cargo. She found my maritime obsession odd, especially my passion for snapping countless photos of cranes, until I explained that my father had been a longshoreman. Eventually, I saw what I came for. A fairly nondescript barge arrived fully loaded. I took Nancy with me to get a closer look.

‘Is there a reason why we’re playing hide and seek?’ she said, as we ducked down between the crates.

‘People don’t act natural when they see a camera,’ I explained. ‘I want authenticity.’

We waited for the cargo to be unloaded and parked inside the warehouse. Convinced that the coast was clear, we crept over to where the containers had been deposited. I pulled out a pair of bolt-cutters from my trousers. Asking her to hold my camera, I broke the lock.

‘Hang on a minute,’ she drawled, ‘are you some kind of spy?’

‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ I said, demurely.

She giggled. ‘How exciting.’

We pried open the door and slipped inside. I used my keyring flashlight to get a better look. The turtles were in slatted cages. They popped their heads back inside their shells, when struck by my torch-light. There, amongst the mottled lettuce and defecation, I saw them - ‘The Cuora Trifasciata!’

‘Say what?’ laughed Nancy.

I hastily snapped some photos, and swept the beam across the cage. There was a label, “Kuromizu Enterprises”.