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Shrimp trawl data big problem in sea turtle study |
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NEW ORLEANS -- Lack of data from shrimp trawling is a huge problem in getting a national picture of sea turtle deaths and captures on fishhooks and in fishing nets, and limits on such bycatch should be set nationally rather than within individual fisheries, a new study says.
All six species of sea turtles found in U.S. waters are either endangered or threatened. Most either migrate or are so widespread that they can be caught in different ways by people fishing for different species of fish and shellfish, said lead researcher Elena Finkbeiner, a doctoral student who did the research at Duke University and just transferred to Stanford University. The most extreme example is loggerhead turtles, up for a federal decision this week about whether they should be listed as endangered rather than threatened. Finkbeiner said they're so widespread that they can be caught in 17 of the 18 fisheries analyzed by scientists at Duke, Conservation International and the National Marine Fisheries Service for the study published Wednesday in the journal Biological Conservation. But limits on sea turtle "bycatch" are currently set and regulated by those 18 fisheries, 14 in the Atlantic and four in the Pacific. They range from boats using set gillnets off of California to those dredging for scallops in the mid-Atlantic and those fishing for snapper or grouper. Read the complete story from The Miami Herald
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MELISSA WOOD, NATIONAL FISHERMEN: Meting out the meager
May 22, 2012 - Listening to the New England Council's Groundfish Advisory Panel talk about how that industry is going to pay for monitoring costs is kind of like trying to figure out how to pay your bills when you've just lost your job. Though monitoring is important keeping costs down is critical. As Panel Member Gary Libby pointed out, "If we had 100 percent monitoring we probably wouldn't have an industry."
