The story Alice in Wonderland has a haunting poem in it called "Soup of the Evening". The Mock Turtle sings it to Alice and the Gryphon (for more information on that-click on this link:) http://www.artpassions.net/rackham/alice...
The song is about turtle soup. I knew this song from my childhood, and never thought much about it until I started doing a little research for this article. Lewis Carroll was the author of Alice in Wonderland and his song "Soup of the Evening" is believed to be a parody of a popular song called "Star of the Evening". Turtle soup was a delicacy and very popular in Lewis Carroll's time. Conservation of wildlife wasn't really considered. Green sea turtles were used for this soup because of their under-shell. This part of the turtle is called the calipee. It's what gave turtle soup its special taste. Sir Winston Churchill was very fond of Green sea turtle soup.
That was then, and this is now. Green sea turtles are not as abundant as years ago, yet people still capture and kill them for food, for their shells, and for their eggs. In 1978, Green sea turtles were listed as an endangered/threatened species. Green sea turtles near Florida and the Pacific coast of Mexico are listed currently as endangered. Other Green sea turtle populations are now listed as threatened. For more information on conservation efforts, visit these links:
http://www.broomfieldenterprise.com/scie...
http://www.cccturtle.org/n_harvest.htm
The Green sea turtle gets its name from the green tint of the calipee, which is the fat under its shell. There are actually two types of Green sea turtles, the Atlantic green turtle, which has been found in the Atlantic Ocean near Europe and North America, and the Black sea turtle which has been found in the Eastern Pacific near Alaska, California, and Chile. The Black sea turtle is really a Green sea turtle with a darker top shell, or carapace. For information on Green sea turtles, conservation efforts, and more detailed information on Green sea turtles and sea turtles in general, visit these links:
http://cccturtle.org/green.htm
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/prot_res/specie...
http://www.tortoise.org/archives/green.h...
In case you're wondering, I'm not being lazy in not writing detailed information in this Sea Turtle series. There is just so much information available, and if you are doing your own study of sea turtles, the websites provided give a lot of information as well as some great photos. The www.cccturtle.org website is a great one to bookmark. I've also included a link back to their website in their banner (see above).
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