Page 36 - spring18

The incipient scientist conducted research Always the rebel, Nichols jumped in anyway.
while playing in the water with his brother and He told his professor, “If I waste time, I’ll take
cousins. responsibility. I’m gonna give it a shot.” Looking
“I caught snapping turtles and put numbers on
‘Neuroscientists their back,” he says. Though he can’t attest to the back, he says, his insistence on sticking to turtles
“was a combination of naivete and insight.”
reliability of his boyhood findings, he was trying In Mexico, he not only gathered data on the
are studying this: to answer questions like “How many turtles are scarce turtles, he also talked to the fishermen
there in the Chesapeake?” who had helped lead them to the verge of
the emotional, “I liked math and I liked turtles. I even extinction by overhunting. Diners in London
dreamed about them. And I made a career out of enjoyed turtle soup in those days; homesick
psychological, it.” From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, Mexicans living far from their native Baja longed
for turtle meat. And the local fishermen “would
Nichols spent six months every year in the field, have turtle feasts — gather the family together,
cognitive and traveling up and down the Sea of Cortez and the celebrate,” Nichols says. “It was reverential.”
Pacific coast of Baja California. Covering about The Mexican government was protecting the
spiritual benefits 3,000 miles of coastland, he went to countless turtle breeding grounds down on Michoacán’s
fishing villages. Pacific coast, but not guarding the feeding
“I did a lot of miles,” he says, cruising the back
of water.’ roads in a lumbering International Harvester grounds in the Sea of Cortez.
While Nichols worked with government
Travelall, an early model SUV. environmental officials, he also took a different
Nichols’ study of sea turtles was almost approach, working with the hunters directly.
derailed before it started. Sea turtles were well He’d go out with them in their boats and ask how
on their way to extinction, victims of polluted many turtles they ate in a year.
waters, beachside development and a strong “Maybe they’d say ‘10.’ Then we would ask,
culinary market. His mentors advised him to ‘What if you ate eight?’ and then explain that if
study a more promising species. they kept eating the turtles in large numbers,
their livelihood would disappear.

Wallace J. Nichols, far right,
during a paddleboard yoga
class at Lake Austin Spa in
Austin, Texas.