Rising Pacific Ocean temperatures are triggering a federal legal requirement, triggered by litigation by Turtle Island (TIRN) and Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) to close a large stretch of Southern California waters to driftnet fishing. The closure zone — known as the Loggerhead Conservation Area (LCA) — was established in 2000 to protect loggerhead sea turtles that migrate into Southern California waters during El Niño events, when unusually warm ocean temperatures draw them into the region to feed on crabs. NOAA has predicted that El Niño conditions will begin in June 2026 and continue through February 2027.
The LCA covers the “California Bight,” a roughly 25,000-square-mile area stretching from Point Conception south to the U.S.–Mexico border — closed to driftnetting whenever El Niño conditions occur. The closure remains in effect until the fishery completely shuts down. During an earlier El Niño, Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) had to sue the federal government in 2014 to force implementation of the LCA, read more here.
California’s drift gillnet fishery is now required to be fully phased out by 2027, the result of litigation brought by TIRN, CBD, and Oceana beginning in 2012 and resulting in a bipartican bill in 2016 that was vetoed by Presidnet Trump but finally was sighed into law by President Biden.
Driftnets — sometimes called “curtains of death” — indiscriminately entangle sea turtles, whales, sharks, and countless other species. The fishery operates a small fleet of vessels that set nets the size of the Golden Gate Bridge to drift unattended through open ocean. While the primary commercial targets are swordfish and thresher shark, the mile-wide nets catch everything in their path, resulting in high levels of bycatch — unintended, but well documented catch of species of marine mammals, sea turtles, sharks and many other species, including many endangered. Most of the bycatch is thrown overboard dead or injured.
The loggerhead turtles at risk hatched on beaches in Japan, and now decades old, travel tens of thousands of miles across the Pacific to feed on crabs in the Eastern Pacific — making their long journey only to face entanglement in California’s driftnets.
Header photo credit: Juvenile loggerhead turtle in the California Current, credit: NOAA Fisheries/Paula Olson.
