U.S. gutting protections from destructive gillnet and longline fishing.

While international efforts are underway to explore high seas marine protected areas for the purpose of protecting highly migratory species, the U.S. government is increasingly gutting model marine closures that are protecting such species as the critically endangered leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles.

For example, since early 2004, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries has been advocating the use of "circle hooks" (which are claimed to reduce the number of sea turtles that are hooked internally) as a technological fix so that they can reopen areas once closed to longlining. This type of fishing threatens populations of leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles, as well as albatross, sharks, billfish, and marine mammals. According to data obtained from NOAA Fisheries, as many as 4.4 million sea turtles, seabirds, sharks, billfish, and marine mammals are injured or killed by longlines each year in the Pacific.

The problem with the change to the reliance on circle hooks as the means to protect these species is that there are numerous scientific flaws in the research methodology and findings of the original industry-sponsored circle hook study. Despite these numerous scientific flaws, NOAA Fisheries used the results from the study to rush into place the new regulation requiring the use of circle hooks. This was done without the data having been checked internally for mistakes or flaws, independently peer reviewed, or published. The new regulation is itself loosely applied and entirely exempts tuna longlining.

What has been overlooked is that replacing fishery closures with the circle hook does not address the issue of high levels of bycatch of other species, nor does it reduce fishing effort like the closures did.

In Hawai'i and the Atlantic, longline fishing for swordfish and tuna is once again being allowed in areas where dangerously high bycatch levels had previously led to closures.

Additionally, this past September, the Pacific Fishery Management Council passed a measure that would allow exemptions to time and area closures for gillnet fishing intended to protect these species along the California coast. Until NOAA Fisheries reviews and signs off on this, the council plans to put into place interim exemptions that could go into effect as early as April 2006. The council is also expected to attempt to overturn a ban on longlining on the Pacific Coast that went into effect in 2004.

In short, established and proven conservation measures to protect highly migratory marine species are being gutted and overturned at the request of industry and fisheries councils that are dominated by industry and plagued by conflicts of interest.

To date, 1,007 scientists from 97 nations, 231 nongovernmental organizations from 62 nations, and thousands of other citizens from many countries have called on the United Nations urging it to implement a moratorium on high seas pelagic longlining and gillnet fishing in the Pacific. Eminent scientists including biologist Dr. E. O. Wilson, Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, and Dr. Sylvia Earle have signed this letter to the United Nations.

Rather than reverse a decade of model conservation measures, the United States needs to heed their advice and protect all U.S. waters from these destructive fishing practices.

For an analysis of the circle hook rule and science download the report at:

http://www.seaturtles.org/press_release2.cfm?pressID=222

To sign on to the letter to the United Nations please visit:

http://www.seaturtles.org/actionalertdetails.cfm?actionAlertID=43

Robert Overtz, PhD

Sea Turtle Restoration Project

PO Box 400, Forest Knolls, 94933

[e-mail]