Accidents on the Ocean Highway: Improved Safety Program Needed for Marine Turtles

In a previous post, Lotus Vermeer made an analogy of “Roadkill on the Ocean Highway” with turtle mortality in gillnets. She also suggested testing modifications in the fishing gear that may help reduce sea turtle bycatch in the Pacific. Once developed these modifications will save thousands of bycatch species including marine turtles which are killed every year in fishing gear around the world.

Pending development of such devices and techniques, the mortality of marine turtles and other bycatch species will continue for a very long period. Such modifications, even if developed within next few years, will not likely be adopted by fishermen very quickly especially in some of the small scale and artisanal fisheries in Asia and the Pacific. There will be a resistance in making changes in the traditional fishing practices which may further delay the process. This means that “roadkill” of marine turtles on the ocean highway will continue to be a painful reality even in the years to come.

Waiting until the time such bycatch reduction modifications are developed may take a very long time; therefore, there is a need to look for other options. Finding ways to avoid roadkill on the ocean highway is a good strategy, but saving the life of the accident victims on these highways is needed until such means of reducing bycatch are developed and adopted. WWF-Pakistan decided to act immediately by saving the lives of those that face accidents on ocean highways.

The strategy adopted by WWF-Pakistan is primarily aimed to minimize the “roadkill” of bycatch species, especially marine turtles, by releasing them safely from the gillnets. This all started about 4 years ago, while having a debriefing with one observer on board a tuna gillnet boat. He informed me that 4 turtles were entangled in his gillnets during his last fishing trip. He recorded the location, size and other information about bycatch species. I was happy that such information is being generated which will be used in assessing the frequency of bycatch of important species. Out of curiosity, I asked what was the fate of those turtles and he immediately said that after hauling in the net, which usually takes about 4 to 6 hours, we throw back these turtles in the sea. That seems to be a good gesture.

While reviewing the video clip the observer recorded during the last fishing trip, I was horrified to see how turtles are treated on board the vessels. The turtles were disentangled from the net without taking any care that they were not hurt. The turtle is then left unattended in the sun which may desiccate them. I could see that the turtle was gasping and trying to find a way back to sea. After the whole net was heaved, two fishermen lifted the poor turtle which is almost half dead. Dangling with its legs, the turtle was thrown back in the sea. I can see it landed on its back and start sinking. The clip stopped here so I was not sure whether it survived or drowned. The clips of other three turtles showed almost same treatment.

I decided to make this observer aware of the importance of marine turtles and asked him not to mistreat enmeshed turtles. It was explained pictorially how to carefully disentangle the turtle and immediate release them in the sea gently with head down position so that release process may not hurt them. This turned out to be a major success. On the next trip while looking at the clips, to my utter surprise, I could see all turtles were handled gently, disentangled carefully and immediately released in the sea in the proper manner. The observer was also happily informed that he has asked all his fellow skippers to follow this practice.