Right now, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is considering revising measures that would remove interaction limits between the Hawai’i shallow-set pelagic longline fishery and endangered North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles.
This means the Hawai’i longline fleet would be allowed to interact with – hook, capture, entangle, and kill – an unlimited number of loggerhead sea turtles with zero constraints.
Sea turtles and marine mammals become hooked on longlines while trying to take bait, or become entangled while swimming through the walls of nearly invisible lines and hooks — encounters that can drown the turtles or leave them fatally injured.
The population of loggerhead sea turtles has declined 90 percent over the past 60 years. NMFS should be decreasing interaction limits – so this deadly fishing practice is shut down after interacting with a single endangered or threatened sea turtle.
