Massive campaign launched to raise public awareness

Domestic animals, such as dogs and pigs, also dig up and eat or destroy more than one million eggs every season.

The turtle's empty carapace, or shell, is used as decorative pieces in their homes, or as containers for holding water and food.

"If people continue with this spate of killing nesting turtles and destroying their eggs, they'll be destroying generations of turtles and their offspring and pushing these wonderful reptiles into extinction," says project officer of the Ghana Wildlife Society, Gerrard Osei Boakye.

However feasible turtle-driven eco-tourism might be, it is a rather distant prospect for ordinary fishermen such as 35-year-old Nii Ashietey.

He sees the giant sea turtle simply as a massive piece of meat to be charcoal-grilled and eaten, or sold and the cash spent to send his little daughter to school or hospital.

"If my daughter is sick or I have to pay school fees and this animal comes to our beach, then I have to catch it and kill it because people like the meat," argues Ashietey, who says he has done precisely that on two occasions.

Many turtles end up on dinner plates

The Ghana Wildlife Society is worried that given the current rate of killing the turtles, they will soon be extinct.

The society is mounting colourful turtle billboards along some roads in the capital just a few minutes from the beaches to help raise public awareness.

The Ningo ritual

They are also recruiting 2,000 new members into the Society by the end of this year in a campaign appropriately called "The 2000X2000 Campaign," which will rope in locals who will be expected to protect the turtles, their eggs and hatchlings within the fishing communities.

And shells are used for decoration or carrying food

Interestingly, among the Ga-Adangbe people of Ningo, 60km east of Accra, giant sea turtles are regarded as sacred.

The elders perform rituals for the ancient reptiles when they come ashore, without harming them.

Of course, the wildlife activists don't see the giant sea turtle in quite the same spiritual light; but they are in no hurry to turn the beliefs of the Ningo people around.