A global coalition is currently seeking to protect a critically endangered species of sea turtle found in oceans around Bermuda.

Hawksbill sea turtles live in tropical and subtropical oceans world wide and nest on beaches in 60 nations but their numbbers have declined by 80 percent in recent decades.

And they could face further losses unless a proposal by Cuba to reopen international trade in hawksbill shells is turned down.

The Species Survival Network (SSN) - a body of 65 conservation, environmental and animal protection organisations - is calling on the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to reject the proposal.

The proposal will be voted on at the upcoming CITES meeting to be held November 3 to 15 in Santiago, Chile and an SSN delegation will be present at the meeting to push for it to be rejected.

Costa Rica, Barbados and the US have criticised Cuba's proposal and similar hawksbill trade proposals were defeated at CITES meetings in 1997 and 2000.

The proposal comes just one year after 830 participants from 73 countries in the 22nd annual symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation passed a resolution opposing the reopening of international trade in hawksbill shells.

Up to 500 hawksbills are killed for domestic consumption in Cuba each year and 7.8 metric tons of the shells have been stockpiled.

Cuba claims the shells have been collected from a Cuban population of hawksbills but SSN said there is no such population and that turtles captured and killed in Cuba are part of a wider Caribbean population that nests in other countries where most sub-populations are declining or depleted.

As few as 5,000 hawksbills nest in the Caribbean each year.

Hawksbills are threatened by illegal tortoiseshell trade, hunting of adults and collection of eggs for food, destruction of nesting areas and incidental catch in fishing operations.

And, the low reproductive - females lay their first eggs at 20 to 40 years - makes them especially vulnerable to over-exploitation.

A ban on international trade of hawksbills became effective in 1993 and international trade in all sea turtle species is banned by CITES.

According to the chair of the SSN Sea Turtle Working Group, the number of hawksbill nests in several Caribbean countries increased. However, wide-spread illegal trade in sea turtle shells limits further recovery.

No importing countries are specified in the proposal but the country considered most likely is Japan which imported 40 tons of tortoiseshell annually in the 1970s.