Usually when I receive an email that's been forwarded to hundreds of people its contents is something that doesn't interest me and I'm able to just delete it. The other day though, an email was forwarded to me that took me by surprise because the contents of it hit a little closer to home and I thought that I could do something better than delete it.

In the email that was forwarded to me I seen pictures of people along a beach harvesting sea turtle eggs. I've attached the picture to the article - you can click on it to get a larger view.

Up until I received this email I didn't realize that there was such a strong market for sea turtle eggs. To be honest I didn't realize the extent of the harvest when people would go out and gather the eggs.

It's really easy to look at these pictures and think – well that should be illegal and we should make a law against that. But making a law against the act of harvesting sea turtle eggs doesn't deal with the social driving forces behind the harvest.

One has to wonder if the people that are harvesting the eggs know that what they're doing has an impact on the environment. I think the answer is obvious and that they most likely do know that harvesting the eggs, the potential offspring of an animal that is protected in most countries, is going to somehow have a detrimental effect on the turtle's future.

So why would these people continue to do something that they know is wrong? To fully understand and answer this you'd likely have to be in their country and you'd likely have to be living in their shoes for awhile. The factor that drives people to do this damage and harvest these eggs is most likely economic.

If you had minimal opportunities to make money that you needed to send your kids to school, to pay your electrical bill, or to buy groceries to feed your children with - you might also be on the beach harvesting those eggs. If you had the opportunity to go out for a couple of days and harvest eggs that you could sell and make a months wages with - it's likely that you'd be on the beach harvesting those eggs too.

So to deal with this problem we'd not only need to make and enforce a law against the harvesting of the eggs but we'd also need to provide the same opportunities to the people that the harvesting and selling of the eggs would.

It's easy to make laws and look at the situation with disgust, it's harder to find a real solution that works.