Eight children and one adult died after eating sea turtle flesh on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar archipelago, while 78 others were hospitalized, authorities said Saturday. Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy in Zanzibar, despite the fact that it occasionally causes deaths due to chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning.
Dr. Haji Bakari, the Mkoani District medical officer, confirmed that the adult who died late Friday was the mother of one of the children who had died earlier. He said the turtle meat was devoured on Tuesday.
Bakari told The Associated Press that laboratory tests verified that all of the fatalities had consumed sea turtle flesh.
Authorities in Zanzibar, a Tanzanian semi-autonomous territory, sent a disaster management team under the direction of Hamza Hassan Juma, who advised locals to refrain from eating sea turtles.
Seven individuals died on Pemba in November 2021, including a three-year-old child, after eating turtle flesh, and three others were hospitalized.
It was unclear whether any kind of sea turtle was eaten in Zanzibar and contributed to the deaths.
In addition to human predation, most sea turtle species, including Kemp’s Ridley, have been listed as critically endangered due to a variety of climatological and environmental reasons.
That species has encountered a new problem as a result of warming waters off the northeast coast, which has prompted them to stay longer in Massachusetts in late October, when they should have been heading south.
Since the 1970s, scores of Kemp’s Ridley turtles have washed up on Massachusetts beaches in a hypothermic state known as cold-stunning. A researcher working to save as many animals as possible told CBS News last year that the number had risen to more than 700 every year.
