Early twentieth century author Elliott Napier called himself a ‘nonologist’, implying that his qualifications were limited to a love for – rather than knowledge of, the Great Barrier Reef in his 1928 book, On the Barrier Reef. Despite the book’s absence of supporting pics, it was so well accepted that it went to seven impressions in eleven years and today it is a revelation of the attitudes of that era. On one hand visitors were enraptured by the GBR: on the other hand they couldn’t wait to destroy it. 
  These contradictory emotions still drive us today, despite the disastrous consequences of past attitudes and excesses. Over-fishing, over-development, over-population and toxic land run-off have brought the GBR to its knees, so much so that some biologists seriously doubt its ability to recover. Yet, almost unbelievably, many scientists of yesteryear really believed that wanton destruction and natural sustainability would be happy bedfellows. 
  Look, for example, at this extract from another early book, Wonders of the Great Barrier Reef by T.C. Roughley, published in 1945. The author describes a tense moment when he was being circled by sharks as he stood on a “nigger head” on Wistari Reef with the tide rising and the Heron Island launch late in returning for him.
  As I watched them (the sharks), fascinated, I thought that their race owed me nothing, for had I not for many years advocated their wholesale destruction for the commercial products they yielded? For years I had been striving to develop an industry that would lead to their slaughter without any show of mercy. 
  This extraordinarily insensitive paragraph was written not by an ignorant slash-and-burn developer; to the contrary, Mr Roughley was a Bachelor of Science, Superintendent of Fisheries (NSW), President of the Royal Zoological Society (1934-6) and President of the Linnean Society of NSW (1938-9). In those days he was as near as you get to a friend of the environment. 
  With friends like that, the Great Barrier Reef certainly does not need enemies. 
  Although Roughley’s book was not published until the last year of Word War II, it was written in 1936, just four years after Captain Cristian Poulson converted an old turtle cannery on Heron Island into a tourist resort, which to this day is one of only two resorts on the actual reef (the other is Green Island). The turtle cannery had operated on Heron Island during the 1926-7 season and re-opened briefly late 1929. Total production of turtle soup during those two periods was 25,800 tins after which a few turtles were shipped live to Brisbane for slaughter before the factory finally closed. 
  Previously, a cannery had been established on nearby North West Island between January 1924 and February 1928, which worked the November- February egg-laying season. Female turtles were preferred for their superior flesh, and had no chance of escape as they struggled out of the sea and lumbered up the beach where they were slaughtered and rendered into quarter of a million 16-ounce tins of soup over the four-year life of the cannery. 
  Some of the most vivid insights into this deplorable era are offered by the ‘non-ologist’, Elliott Napier, who visited the North West Island cannery in the 1920s. He starts his description by explaining that the Hawksbill turtle had the “happy privilege” of only being useful for making “tortoiseshell tables” while the “province of his green brother is to supply the aldermanic banquets of the world with that special brand of soup which is so closely associated with mayors and corporations”. Slipping from the callous to the caring, Napier then says:
  It is one of the most dreadful things about the usage of animals for human consumption that their dispatch seems always to be associated with such unnecessary cruelty – or what appears to the ordinary man to be unnecessary, anyway. We all know of the hideous torment associated with stock-trains; and here in this small industry (turtle canning) it seems that the same insensibility to animal suffering must prevail. 
  Turtles arriving on the beach after swimming across the reef at high tide were easy targets, being simply thrown over on their backs and then decapitated with an axe. After being left to bleed for a few hours, they were butchered, boiled, souped, tinned and exported. The procedure was called “from sea to soup” with alliterative aptness. 
  It is interesting that Napier refers to the turtle’s remarkable after-death nerve life, claiming that it was not uncommon for a turtle’s heart to continue beating for three days after removal from the body, and at least one trained observer witnessed a turtle still walking 24 hours after decapitation! 
  These claims seem far-fetched, but I witnessed a turtle being butchered on a pearling lugger in the early 1960s and saw a steak of flesh actually wriggle out of the cook’s hand when he grasped it some hours later. The turtle’s nervous system does seem to be remarkable. 
  Processing companies pandering to the tastes of “mayors and corporations” were not the only industries abusing green turtles. For decades Queensland’s tourist industry offered turtle rides during the summer months when the females came ashore to lay their eggs. As Elliott Napier noted: 
  It was on such occasions that we used them as festive steeds; and great was the fun we got out of the experience. 
  He went on to say that; as they (the turtles) raised no verbal objection, it is to be presumed that they had none. 
  If they expressed their ‘verbal objections’, man’s excuse to capitalise on the miracle of talking turtles would have been boundless, as it was these unwilling ‘festive steeds’ dumbly carried pleasure-seeking tourists down the beach and into the water. The jockey supported himself with a rope taken from the turtle’s neck, which not only steadied the rider, but prevented the turtle from diving prematurely, thereby prolonging riding time in the water. Women, it is said, chose to sit on the turtle’s back ‘side saddle’ from where they joyfully fell off once in the water. 
  This trivialising of nature and abuse of native animals was typical of that era, but it underlines a question posed by many conservationists today: aren’t we still abusing turtles by encouraging tourists to watch their egg-laying at night under spotlights? Are we certain the practice has no downside? Sure, it is strictly controlled by National Parks, but don’t forget that seventytwo years ago an eminent Bachelor of Science thought it was good to drive sharks into extinction for commercial gain, and that most certainly has had a downside. 
  Despite the repugnancy of old attitudes, the tragedy is they have become reality. Nowadays the Asian shark-fin market alone accounts for the destruction of one hundred million sharks annually. One hundred million! Can anyone really describe that as sustainable? And turtles, as everyone knows, are facing extinction, so much so that the delicate subject of Indigenous hunting rights are now officially listed as one of the causes. But the major cause has been past government inaction. Today’s marine parks are anathema to many folk, but most of us recognise their importance in a greed-driven economy. The environment must be recognised and respected as the vital capital base that it is. It is too easy to forget that the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, for example, came not from intelligent government initiatives, but from people-power rejecting the government’s plan to issue drilling rights (amongst many other issues). 
  As for souping the turtles of the Heron Island area, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s first zoning was an 11,800 square kilometre area around the Bunker and Capricorn Groups, off Gladstone, in October 1979. It embraces the islands where green turtles were so badly abused and the indications are that it is working. Since then thirty three per cent of the entire GBR has been green-zoned, again disappointing both commercial interests who wanted less area locked up and conservationists who wanted more. 
  It’s the old story, you can’t please ’em all, but the sad truth is we need to protect ourselves from ourselves because, like it or not, we are Lemmings rushing towards the cliff, the difference being that we have the intelligence to stop.