By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News Millions of marine turtles have been killed over the past two decades through entrapment in fishing gear, according to a global survey. Described as the first global synthesis of existing data, the study found especially high rates of “bycatch” in the Mediterranean and eastern Pacific. Six of the seven sea turtle types are on the Red List of Threatened Species. Writing in the journal Conservation Letters, researchers advocate much greater use of gear safe for turtles. These include circular hooks rather than the conventional J-shaped hooks on long fishing lines, and hatches that allow the reptiles to escape from trawls. Turtles must come to the surface to breathe. When they are caught in a net or on a fishing hook, they cannot surface, and drown. Lead researcher Bryan Wallace said the state of the world’s turtles was an indicator of the wider health of the oceans. “Sea turtles are sentinel species of how oceans are functioning,” he said. “The impacts that human activities have on them give us an idea as to how those same activities are affecting the oceans on which billions of people around the world depend for their own well-being.” … “Because the reports we reviewed typically covered less than 1% of all fleets, with little or no information from small-scale fisheries around the world, we conservatively estimate that the true total is probably not in tens of thousands, but in the millions of turtles taken as bycatch in the past two decades,” said Dr Wallace. …
Turtles die in nets ‘in millions’
