They’re disappearing rapidly from the rivers and lakes where they’ve been able to survive at all. But at one Scarborough restaurant, they were blatantly listed right there on the menu: to delight the palate, soup made from threatened freshwater turtles.

Da Zhao Jian, owner of Fortune Seafood Restaurant on Midland Ave., was handed $10,000 in fines on March 21 for making the dwindling turtle dish available at his eatery.

He was charged with possessing and selling the spiny softshell turtle — listed as threatened by the provincial and federal governments — when Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources officials found 31 of the critters packed in a freezer at the Cantonese restaurant during a “routine inspection” of seafood establishments in May 2010.

“The fact that he was brazen enough to put them on the menu … He must have a big ego, or didn’t understand the laws in Ontario,” said species-at-risk biologist Scott Gillingwater.

The restaurant owner was convicted of unlawful possession of the spiny softshell turtles under the Endangered Species Act, and of listing a protected species for sale under the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act. Each violation carried a $5,000 fine, according to the ministry.

Asked to comment through an English-speaking employee, the owner declined to say anything about the fine or where he obtained the turtles.

Rick Andrews, the ministry conservation officer who headed the investigation, said he’s aware of two other cases where the at-risk softshell turtles were for sale at Toronto restaurants. Both occurred in 2011, when two separate establishments were each caught with four spiny softshell turtles that were to be eaten by customers.

“Although we have quite a few laws in Canada and Ontario, there’s still an illegal black market for pet turtles and turtles as a food source,” said Gillingwater, who has studied the softshell turtles since 1994 and works with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority.

“This is maybe a bigger issue than we’ve realized. It’s likely that a lot more is going on behind closed doors,” he said.

Peter Paul Van Dijk, director of turtle conservation for the Washington-based wildlife protection group Conservation International, described a network of trade, wherein turtles are captured and exported to China and Southeast Asian countries where they’re part of the traditional cuisine.

The taste for turtle has driven the populations of many freshwater turtles in Asia “close to zero,” he said. Only within the past decade have North American turtles like the spiny softshell been tapped to fill this demand, said Van Dijk.

“It’s a delicacy that’s considered to have medicinal side benefits — kind of a part of healthy living,” he said. “It is a major factor in the decline of some species.”

Although the turtle meat trade is active in Ontario, Gillingwater said habitat loss and pollution are the main threats to the remaining spiny softshell population in the province. All the same, he’s seen turtle nests that were under protective caging pillaged and destroyed by illicit passersby, he said.

“We’ve seen drastic declines in the number of females that have been nesting,” Gillingwater said. “We are able to slow (the population) decline, but not prevent it.”

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Ron Brooks, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Guelph, is finishing a report on spiny softshell turtles for the Commission on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. He recommends that it be classified as endangered, rather than threatened, and estimates the adult population at fewer than 1,000. The commission last assessed the species in 2002.

“Things have gotten quite a bit worse since then,” said Brooks. “They’re clearly being wiped out.”