Changes are the need of the hour to protect sea turtles on Florida’s coast. Serious trouble is brewing offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Sea turtles are getting snagged on commercial fishing lines that stretch for miles. Turtles grab the bait, get caught, and then drown before fishermen retrieve the lines. Statewide, the number of loggerhead sea turtle nests plummeted by 40 percent in the past decade.
According to the Fisheries Service nearly 1,000 turtles were caught by longlines between July 2006 and December 2008, and many of them drowned. That’s eight times the limit. This slaughter could have been avoided if officials monitored the fishery better, and released fisheries data quickly so that swift measures could be taken. Faced with this evidence, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration must halt the bottom longline fishery immediately to comply with the law and protect sea turtles.
It is true that Florida’s loggerhead population is crucial to the species’ worldwide survival. To find loggerheads at the densities found in Florida, you’d have to go to the Arabian peninsula and to Masirah Island in Oman. Florida and Masirah account for 70 to 90 percent of the world’s loggerhead nesting, but Masirah’s turtles also face threats from fishing, beach lighting, egg collecting, beach driving, and so on.
