By Sarah Bridge

Copyright caymancompass

Demand for turtle meat remains high but the low price it sells for is “a concern”, according to the head of the Cayman Turtle Centre.

Chris Jackson, CEO of the West Bay facility, was speaking to Finance Committee on 25 Sept. during the debate about a request for $1 million in supplementary funding to the centre to make up for a budgetary shortfall.

“The demand for turtle meat has not declined,” he told MPs. “It has increased tremendously. The price of turtle meat is also of a concern. We sell turtle meat for $9 a pound. It costs us $31 a pound to produce.”

Cultural dish

Jackson said the Cayman Turtle Centre is the sole supplier of turtle meat in the Cayman Islands.

“Turtle meat is and has always been the culture of the Cayman Islands. As a little boy, I remember my grandfather was one of the pioneers that used to bring turtle meat from Miskito Cay back in the early ‘70s. So, I’ve been around it for quite a while.”

The amount of meat produced by the centre each year depends on how many turtles are hatched four to five years before, with the facility managing the number which grow to adulthood and are selected for processing.

“In the past, our ownership agreement had supported us producing about 40,000 pounds of meat per annum,” he said. “Because of the demand and the price, we have oversold our commitment, so we are basically at 70,000 pounds of meat per year. So we have been reducing meat for the last three or four years and we’re down now at about 20%, 25% of what we would normally sell. And the reason for that is we need to manage and take care of our stock so that we can have meat.”

Jackson said that, as turtle meat is a delicacy in the Cayman Islands and a cultural dish throughout the year, he didn’t want only to be able to sell meat at peak times, so it was “critical” for the centre to manage its production effectively.

Profit for restaurants

“I remember when I first started work at the turtle centre, we used to send 500, 600 pounds every two weeks to Cayman Brac and we can’t do that anymore,” he said. “The problem is it’s been commercialised … The restaurants are buying it up to make a profit. That $9 a pound – where can you go in the Cayman Islands to any supermarket and buy beef, chicken, oxtail, fresh local fillet snapper? … It’s $13.99 a pound for fillet snapper local, yet the turtle centre is selling meat at $9 a pound.”

Black market supplies of turtle meat have also been an issue in the past, he said.

“The problem that we had at one point, which we put our foot down [on], was when cars are actually driving around to construction sites selling turtle meat,” said Jackson. “Come on now guys, we need the support. We need you to trust us that we can grow our herd back, which we will, and manage the price of turtle meat.”

He added that increasing the price of turtle meat by $4 a pound would not help with filling the current financial gap between the $6 million needed to run the centre and the $5 million government subsidy already approved, “because if we increase the price of turtle meat we’re also reducing the amount of meat that we sell. So increasing it and decreasing the volume is not really helping us any better financially.

“The point is for us to have the continuity of turtle meat throughout the year for everyone to get it whether it’s only five pounds or 10 pounds. But when people come down and want 15, 20, 30, 40 pounds at a time, it’s hard to be able to fill those orders like how we used to.”

As well as supplying turtle meat, the centre is a popular tourist attraction, with 211,000 visitors last year. MPs approved the request for $1 million in supplementary funding for the centre to add to the $5 million already approved in its government subsidy.

Cayman Airways

MPs also approved an additional $12.7 million in funding for Cayman Airways, of which $5.8 million is earmarked for paying off a long-standing debt to the Cayman Islands Airports Authority, $3 million to make up a funding shortfall carried over from last year, $1.6 million due to the 5% cost-of-living allowance and a one-time honorarium payment of $2,000 to each employee, $700,000 for third-party airline handling and $1.6 million for maintenance.

Minister for Tourism Gary Rutty told the committee that the average load was 59% which was described by opposition leader Joey Hew as “quite low” and raised some “red flags”.

In response, Rutty described Cayman Airways as “one of our national prides” and “something we can continue to be proud of”.