A sea turtle involved in the case was fostered in Beijing Workers' Stadium Rich Country Underwater World.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Wei Xi/photo
One day in March 2019, the Xuzhou police in Jiangsu Province was searching for evidence in the office of a suspect.
The house is over 100 square meters, and there is a fish tank about 2 meters long in the center.
A sea turtle is swimming back and forth in the fish tank, at a constant speed and slowly.
It is female with a body length of 57 cm.
The person who keeps it is a local "triad boss".
The police collected evidence at the scene and sealed up the office. It was the only evidence that was not taken away.
Before it, "Black Boss" also raised a juvenile turtle with moss on its back, which was recycled by the seller.
In 2016, as the successor "mascot", it came to Xuzhou from Hainan and "lived" in this fish tank.
How does a sea turtle cross about 2,000 kilometers from the deep sea to the fish tank of the "Black Boss"-the puzzle solvers include the Food, Drug and Environmental Crime Investigation Team of the Public Security Bureau of Pizhou City, Jiangsu Province, Xuzhou Railway Transport Procuratorate, Xuzhou Agricultural and Rural Areas Bureau and experts from all over the country who study sea turtles.
As the investigation progresses, more sea turtles that have been illegally caught and sold have been discovered.
Teachers and students from Hainan Institute of Tropical Oceanography, public welfare individuals, airport staff, airline staff, etc. joined in. These people gathered together to try to send the turtles back to the sea.
More than 600 sea turtles were sold to 13 provinces and 30 cities
On March 19, 2019, Li Ziqiang saw it for the first time.
Since that office was closed down, the female turtle has been living alone for a week.
It didn't eat, and there was moss on its carapace.
In the turbid green water, it still keeps swimming regularly.
The police knocked the fish tank with a hard object to get a glimpse of it.
The first impression it left on Li Ziqiang was "an elegant lady".
Li Ziqiang is 46 years old and has been in the police for 21 years.
He has caught stray dogs and cats at the police station, and once appeared on TV because of a seduction theft case.
After working in the Food, Drug and Environmental Crime Investigation Brigade of the Public Security Bureau of Pizhou City, he dealt with counterfeit drug dealers and food dealers, calling himself a "little policeman", and what he did was "anyone can do good things."
This time, Li Ziqiang found a seller of sea turtles, an aquarium shop in Xuzhou City that specializes in fish watching.
From 2009 to 2018, the shop owner sold 17 hawksbill turtles that were banned by the state. The turtles were bought with a fish tank, and they enjoyed monthly home maintenance and cleaning services.
The two turtles in the office of "Black Boss" were purchased by the owner of the aquarium from two companies selling aquatic products in Hainan.
Li Ziqiang grabbed this chain and rushed to Hainan. At that time, he didn't realize that this would be the longest case in his career. "In the past, it was all about'punishing crimes', this time it was about'saving life'".
In a village far from the coast in the hinterland of Hainan Island, Li Ziqiang entered the aquatic product company and searched it.
The company is located in a private house. Li Ziqiang has been around for a long time and finally noticed that the cement slabs of the indoor stairs are a little loose.
He pried open the cement board and found two sea turtles living in the dark room.
Another company was also hiding in the village. He found a sea turtle specimen and dozens of boxes of invoices from the warehouse.
The two sales companies mainly buy sea turtles from local fishermen, and occasionally go to Vietnam to exchange a box of instant noodles for a sea turtle.
More surprising secrets are recorded in the invoice.
The code names of the turtles are "Wang Ba" and "Big Fish".
"Number 1" refers to hawksbill turtles, and "Number 2" refers to green turtles.
The two sales companies mix sea turtles with Hainan specialties such as tropical fruits and marine fish, and ship them by air through a local logistics company in Hainan.
In 2009-2019 alone, the company shipped more than 600 sea turtles to 13 provinces and 30 cities across the country.
The logistics company collects an agency fee (a benefit fee) from the sales company, ranging from 200 yuan to several thousand yuan per turtle.
The sales company also invented the "7-day package" rule: within 7 days after the buyer receives the goods, if the turtle dies, a new turtle will be replaced for free; 7 days after the receipt of the goods, the turtle will die and the seller will not return it.
These acts of illegally purchasing, transporting, and selling sea turtles all point to Article 341 of the Criminal Law: the crime of endangering precious and endangered wild animals.
The Xuzhou Railway Transport Procuratorate decided to intervene in advance to guide the investigation.
"I'm considered to have accumulated a piece of merit"
In ancient legends, the dragon gave birth to nine sons, and the old six tyrants looked like tortoises.
Xuanwu, another divine beast in the mythology, is a combination of turtle and snake in appearance.
There is a superstition among folks that touching a turtle can bring blessings to people.
In the world of sea turtles, hawksbill turtles are the most popular species among turtle buyers.
Its back armor has 13 tile-like scales, which can be made into glasses frames, combs, bracelets, rings and other handicrafts. The golden and brown intertwined patterns are particularly beautiful.
The superstitious argument is that tortoiseshell products can also "ward off evil spirits."
The "elegant lady" in the "Black Boss" fish tank is just a tortoiseshell.
According to the address on the invoice, Li Ziqiang found many people who bought sea turtles.
A tortoise buyer in Harbin told Li Ziqiang that his mother had a tumor in his stomach. He bought a tortoiseshell in the hope of prolonging the life of his mother.
Later, the tortoiseshell died. Feng Shui advised him to buy another one to make up for it, so that it can continue to attract wealth and ward off evil spirits.
A woman in Beijing buys turtles because she loves marine animals.
After the sea turtle was confiscated, she often called Li Ziqiang to ask about the turtle’s fostering place and health status: “Can we go to the release site at our own expense? We are far away on the shore and just watch it return to the sea.”
Turtle lovers like her are all over the world.
Many turtle lovers have made similar jokes: Female turtles lay eggs on the beach, but they are mistakenly thought to be stranded by the beach people and sent back to the sea abruptly.
Overfishing has led to a gradual decrease in the number of sea turtles.
In 2021, the National Key Protected Wildlife List will be revised, and the protection level of sea turtles will be upgraded from the national second-level key protected wild animals to the first level.
Among them, the tortoiseshell is listed as a "critically endangered" species by the World Conservation Union.
The scarcity of sea turtles demonstrates the status of the owner.
The boss of a Beijing film company built a 4-meter-long and 2-meter-high fish tank in his office.
Four turtles patrolled it, and there were corals, clownfish and two moray eels in the tank.
Facing the police, the stylishly dressed tall boss immediately expressed his opinion and asked the police to take away his turtles: "I don't want to raise anymore, I want to donate, where can I donate?" Later, he called and invited Li Ziqiang to travel to Beijing, and finally proposed: "Can it be dealt with lightly?" If he is sentenced, the producer of the film he participated in cannot write his name.
In that phone call, he did not mention the four turtles that had been raised for two years.
In addition to individual buyers, many aquariums across the country also bought turtles from the two sales companies involved.
Once an aquarium manager told Li Ziqiang, "An aquarium without turtles has no soul."
Promotional posters will be printed with pictures of sea turtles. Tourists will feed sea turtles for a fee based on the number of times.
Occasionally, the aquarium can receive sales calls from sales companies: "Finding a large turtle that has been encountered once in a thousand years is definitely the treasure of the town hall!"
Some releasers bought sea turtles, wrote "Buddha" on the turtle shells in red or yellow paint, and then sent them back to the sea.
In a police station in Hainan, a person who bought sea turtles for release could not understand why she had done a good thing and broke the law.
She has no income, but insists on going to the market every day to buy sea turtles and marine fish, and then put them back into the sea.
A fisherman got to know her and called and said, "I caught a sea turtle. If you don't come to rescue it, I will send it to the restaurant and let it be eaten!"
She chooses to rescue every time.
She mobilized caring people to donate money, all devoted to the cause of rescuing sea turtles and returning them to the sea.
In the end, the police did not file a case against her because she "has no subjective malice."
After Li Ziqiang rescued the sea turtles involved in the case, he sent them to the local aquarium for foster care, waiting for the investigation, prosecution, and judgment of the case.
In the spring of 2020, the sudden new crown pneumonia epidemic changed the living conditions of sea turtles.
Zhong Shuai, deputy inspector general of the Xuzhou Railway Transport Procuratorate, recalled that at that time, home isolation was encouraged in various places, and some aquarium staff were unable to feed in time, causing hungry turtles to bite each other.
Some aquariums were poorly managed and owed debts. After the court seized the property, the water and electricity were cut off, and the turtles involved died.
The Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Yueyang City, Hunan Province sent 3 letters to the Public Security Bureau of Pizhou City within a week, because of the 16 turtles that were fostered in the local aquarium, 6 of them died during the epidemic, and several others were bitten. They hope to release sea turtles early.
Zhong Shuai went to visit the sea turtle involved in a foster care in an aquarium in Xuzhou. The staff took out the body of the sea turtle from the freezer.
Li Ziqiang also has no way of knowing whether the "elegant lady" survived the epidemic.
It has long been mixed in the sea turtle involved and "lived" in the aquarium.
This situation prompted the prosecutor Zhong Shuai, who has been in the industry for 17 years, to reflect, "We conducted this case to protect the turtles. The result has not yet been judged. The turtles involved in the case are dead."
Before the sea turtle case, Zhong Shuai's most common question was to "judge a few years." It is often difficult to determine the actual victim in environmental litigation, and it is more necessary for the prosecutor to speak for the environment.
After the sea turtle involved in the case suffered casualties, he realized that animal protection cases should put animal life first.
The Xuzhou Railway Transport Procuratorate subsequently decided to rescue the sea turtles in seizure and release them as soon as possible.
In the end, the Xuzhou Railway Transport Procuratorate bought "tickets" for the turtles and sent them to Hainan through "regular" procedures and "legal" procedures.
The boss of a certain airline heard that he was going to transport sea turtles, and he immediately coordinated the free transportation of sea turtles.
Zhong Shuai's colleague and prosecutor Fan Pu believes that sea turtles are easy for people to feel compassion and love.
She has handled a case of protecting pythons, and there are few caring people who volunteer to help.
She was responsible for transporting the second batch of sea turtles to Sanya Phoenix International Airport.
The airport staff lined up and took the initiative to help lift the turtle, just to touch the turtle and get lucky.
A staff member heard that the turtles had been dehydrated for two days, and urgently coordinated to give priority to the planes carrying the turtles to land and arrange for the turtles to be taken out of the cargo warehouse.
After more than ten days, the staff member specially sent a message to tell Fan Pu, "My wife gave birth to a son."
Upon receiving this message, Fan Pu couldn't laugh or cry.
The prosecutors set up a group to discuss turtle breeding
Some turtles in human society live in exquisite fish tanks and eat two servings of cod a day. Shrimp and squid are their side dishes, and some live in the dark for a long time.
An aquarium in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province bought 5 sea turtles from the sales company involved in the case and was unable to "register" the sea turtles.
In order to evade supervision, the aquarium hides sea turtles in a cement pool in the equipment area, with a cement cover half-covered, and only exhibits on holidays.
Turtles are happy to be quiet, but the machines that filter seawater in the equipment area work 24 hours a day, and the sound of water is constant.
When Li Ziqiang arrived, there were 4 sick turtles in the cement pond. Some had white carapace and some rotten fins. The fifth turtle was dead and was buried in the back garden of the aquarium.
An aquarium in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province bought 52 small turtles, but only 32 are swimming in the exhibition area.
After Li Ziqiang asked, the manager took out the corpses of 20 small turtles from the refrigerator. Some of the forelimbs were bitten off, and some of the carapace was bitten off.
Tourism projects in the epidemic are difficult to survive. In order to save costs, some aquariums adjust the temperature from 28 degrees Celsius, which is most suitable for turtles, to 25 degrees Celsius, "enough to survive"; some gradually reduce the amount of sea salt blended; others In order to save electricity, turn off the full-spectrum lights that simulate sunlight on the beach, which cannot satisfy the sea turtle's hobby of "basking in the sun".
Zhong Shuai wanted to send these turtles back to Hainan as soon as possible.
Initially, he called the agricultural and rural departments of various places to ask for assistance. The reply from the other party was often, "We have not encountered the problem you mentioned. Let's look into it."
The People's Procuratorate of Jiangsu Province reported the case to the Supreme Procuratorate, and the Supreme Procurator issued a letter requesting that the procuratorate at the place involved cooperate with the Xuzhou Railway Transport Procuratorate to transport sea turtles to Hainan.
A prosecutor from the Hunan Provincial People's Procuratorate pulled all the prosecutors involved in the case into a WeChat group.
This group of legal workers worked together to study what food should be fed to the turtles, and whether to use a stretcher or cloth bag to carry the turtles.
Fan Pu worked with more than 20 procuratorates, and the most frequently heard questions were "how to transport" and "how to pack".
In order to impart transportation experience to local procuratorates, one day before the departure of the first flight, the police and prosecutors in Xuzhou City who were in charge of the case went to the aquarium and packed them by themselves until 3 o'clock in the evening.
They also brought the criminal suspect who was released on bail to the scene and asked him to reproduce the previous method of packing sea turtles illegally.
They customized the corresponding wooden crates according to the size of the turtles, and tied the turtle's limbs with tape to prevent the turtles from struggling to escape during the bumpy transportation.
Finally, they wrapped a large bath towel for the turtles. Experts reminded that after pouring the sea water, the dried salt flowers would irritate the carapace and eyes.
In order to moisturize, before boarding the plane, they used fresh water at room temperature to drench them on the bath towels.
Under the guidance of these people in Xuzhou, local procuratorates transported 19 batches of 268 sea turtles to Hainan.
Regain the wildness as an animal
It is Du Yu, director of the Hainan Sea Turtle Rescue and Conservation Center of Hainan Institute of Tropical Oceanography, who welcomes sea turtles in Hainan and undertakes rewilding training.
This thin and black man always appeared at the scene of sea turtle treatment in a POLO shirt.
When the local media's camera was aimed at him, his collar was always stained with water.
Most of the 268 turtles arrived healthy.
Most sea turtles are female. Because they live in artificial environments, their development is very different from that in the ocean, so it is difficult to judge age and sexual maturity from body size.
The most worrying thing is a red sea turtle that was rescued in Hunan.
After Du Yu slowly uncovered the bath towel wrapped around it, he found a long crack in the carapace, dislocation of the scales, and transparent body fluid and blood seeping out from the crack.
He fixed the turtle and smeared the wound with hydrogen peroxide, Yunnan Baiyao, and alcohol.
Every time you apply the medicine, the turtle's body will shake, struggling to avoid it.
Seventeen days after applying the medicine, the turtle's wound began to heal.
Some sea turtles suffer from skin diseases, and Du Yu asked them to climb more slopes and sunbathe.
Some sea turtles always float on the surface and cannot dive.
Some sea turtles died before they returned to the ocean.
Du Yu dissected its corpse and found plastic bags and fishnet fragments in its stomach.
This sea turtle rescue and conservation center has 60 rescue ponds, which can accommodate 550 sea turtles.
Each turtle must pass Du Yu's "entry test" before entering the rescue and conservation center.
He prepared a 30-centimeter-deep treatment pond for sea turtles with a slope.
Every sea turtle must go into the water to swim, and if you are afraid of water, you can climb a slope to "go ashore".
He will observe swimming styles and identify possible diseases of sea turtles: if only one forelimb is used to fetch water, the other forelimb may be injured; if he flicks around, he may not know how to swim; if he frequently stretches his head to breathe while swimming, the respiratory tract There may be disease.
After the physical examination, he sorted the turtles into their respective pools according to their species, size and disease.
The last criterion for distinguishing turtles is temper.
Du Yu would take out the turtles that "like to bite others" and "playful" alone, stay alone for a period of time, and then try to get them back together to get along with other turtles.
Some sea turtles look forward to being in the dark and look very irritable every time they encounter sunlight.
Du Yu deliberately prepared a sheltered rescue pond to guide these disturbed turtles to slowly adapt to the sun.
More rigorous training awaits this group of sea turtles.
Du Yu fed the live fish to the turtle's mouth, let go, let the turtle practice biting the live fish in front of him.
Slowly, Du Yu threw the live fish directly into the pond and let the turtles practice diving and hunting.
Every two months, they have to do a blood test, a stool test, and a CT test-once each with the abdomen and back up.
Detect the turtles on the bed, some are obedient, some are crawling around.
But some turtles are destined to have no relationship with the ocean.
They have lost their forelimbs or thighs and can only stay in an ambulance care center 400 meters from the ocean for their entire lives.
Sometimes, they will climb to the beach to bask in the sun, towards the ocean, and the researchers will rub medicine on their wounds by the side.
"Even if it is disabled, we must encourage it to move more." Du Yu gradually raised the water level of the rescue pond, forcing these turtles with lack of arms and legs to practice diving, regaining their wildness as an animal.
Don't let them wait any longer
Up to now, there are more than 600 sea turtles involved, and Li Ziqiang has found more than 400. Among them, the Sea Turtle Rescue and Conservation Center has accepted 268 of them and successfully sent 190 sea turtles back to the sea.
These turtles that returned to the sea learned to prey on their own in the rescue and conservation center, and could dive at least 2.5 meters.
Before departure, the larger turtles have electronic chips installed in their bodies, and the forelimbs will also be stamped with a steel stamp with the word "CHN (China)" and a 5-digit number on one side, and the phone number and unit abbreviation of the China Sea Turtle Conservation Alliance on the other.
According to Chen Fang, secretary-general of the China Sea Turtle Conservation Alliance, if fishermen catch sea turtles by mistake and see the mark, most of them will be directly returned to the sea.
Researchers in other countries can see this sign and know that this is a sea turtle released in China.
In mid-April 2021, one of the turtles released in August 2020 returned a signal: it swam to the sea near Fukue Island, Japan.
Li Ziqiang did not personally witness the appearance of sea turtles returning to the sea, but he had embraced and measured most of them.
He still rushed to rescue sea turtles in various provinces.
This "little policeman", who never went to the aquarium before, and never watched popular science videos of sea turtles, has now become a master of sea turtle knowledge, able to see through the lies of the suspect when interrogating.
He also released the little tortoise raised at home.
The 7-year-old daughter rushed to the office and asked him: "Dad, where did I throw the tortoise!" He took his daughter to the riverside: "It's free!"
At the rescue and conservation center in Hainan, Du Yu discovered that some sea turtles began to mate.
He plans to simulate the beach where female turtles lay eggs and build artificial spawning grounds.
As a prosecutor, before the prosecution, Fan Pu called experts from all over the country to ask about the approved value of sea turtles.
This group of experts in scientific research is worried that no one has ever wanted to define the price of a wild sea turtle, and the black market price cannot be used as a reference standard.
Fan Pu's question inspired one of the experts.
After his research, he proposed to subdivide the six stages of sea turtle growth and development: fertilized egg stage, young tortoise stage, juvenile tortoise stage, juvenile tortoise stage, sub-adult stage and adult tortoise stage.
At present, this new theory is waiting for academic approval.
The prosecutor Lv Jin of the People's Procuratorate of Chaoyang District, Beijing found out that Beijing Workers' Stadium Fuguo Underwater World had long accepted and rescued the aquatic wild animals confiscated and handed over by law enforcement agencies and donated by the public.
In order to treat the skin diseases of the sea turtles involved, the aquarium purchased iodophor and hydrogen peroxide, and built a larger sea turtle pond.
The turtles involved in the case in Langfang City, Hebei Province could not find a suitable fostering place and were also sent here.
The Chaoyang District Procuratorate issued a procuratorial proposal, proposing to gradually establish and improve the district aquatic wildlife shelter and rescue system.
In October 2020, Chaoyang District Aquatic Wildlife Rescue Center was formally established, and a batch of clams confiscated by law enforcement agencies were sent here for shelter and conservation.
Zhong Shuai also began to notice that Xuzhou handled bird-related cases, and all birds involved in the case had to be sent to Nanjing for species identification.
After a round trip by high-speed rail, all the birds died. "This type of case should put the lives of animals before the legal process."
After the media reported the turtle case, Zhong Shuai worried that the case is still under investigation. Some turtle buyers would choose to transfer or kill the turtles to escape punishment after seeing the news.
He suggested that if the invoice and documentary evidence are complete, even if the turtle entity is not found, the court should determine the criminal facts of the turtle buyer.
If the turtle buyer harms the turtle in order to avoid punishment, he should be punished more severely.
In August 2020, the first batch of sea turtles involved returned to the sea.
The ship carried the turtles to the release sea area.
Before anyone could react, a sea turtle jumped into the sea from the deck first, flapping its limbs, and rushing to the depths of the ocean.
Zhong Shuai guessed that this turtle smelled of the sea, and it had been longing for the ocean for too long.
Someone wanted to take photos to record the last moments before other sea turtles were released. A prosecutor said on the spot: “Forget it, it can’t wait, don’t let them wait any longer.”
Although he was full of reluctance, "temporary father" Du Yu knew that the sea was the real home of sea turtles.
From the moment it returns, it needs to hunt, dive, and find objects alone in the sea, and it has to do everything on its own.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Wei Xi Source: China Youth Daily