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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 1
September 2005
Oceana petitions Commerce for turtle action
WASHINGTON, DC – Oceana has petitioned Commerce Sec. Carlos Gutierrez for “immediate” action to protect six species of turtles, including loggerheads, which are probably the most common turtle seen by Northeast commercial fishermen.
The Aug. 3 petition requests that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS):
• Conduct “in-water” turtle surveys using trawl or aerial survey techniques to better determine current population levels;
• Increase observer coverage “to obtain accurate information on the number of sea turtles caught in all fisheries;” and
• Set firm limits on the number of turtles that can be taken in commercial fishing operations.
A letter signed by 12 turtle specialists, several of whom had served on NMFS’s 1995 Turtle Expert Working Group (TEWG), accompanied the petition.
The TEWG released two detailed reports – one in 1998 and another in 2000. Oceana pulled its requests directly from the working group’s recommendations.
According to Oceana’s Chris Zeman, NMFS has to stop using information from the 1970s and 1980s to assess current turtle mortality rates and population levels.
“We don’t know the size of these populations,” he said. “We need to strive for better data. It’s definitely time to stop relying on old data claiming it’s the ‘best available science.’”
Gear specialist Ron Smolowitz of the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) didn’t dispute the need for better turtle surveys.
“I think the Fisheries Survival Fund agrees with the need for NMFS to do turtle stock assessments. Any research is going to show that we have way more turtles than people think there are,” he said.
Call from scientists
The 12 scientists who signed the letter to Gutierrez included John Musick of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Andy Read of Duke University, and Alan Bolten of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research. They and the other signatories collectively expressed frustration that none of the TEWG recommendations have been acted upon to date.
“The fisheries service still uses nesting beach surveys to document sea turtle abundance, despite the TEWG’s conclusions that such surveys are not an adequate proxy for sea turtle abundance,” stated the scientists. “Documenting abundances and gathering information about all sea turtle life stages is necessary to get an accurate picture of population status and is essential for documenting fishing impacts to populations, many of which target juvenile and subadult life stages.”
They also said, “Current levels of observer coverage are insufficient and must be extended to include a statistically valid portion of the fishing effort throughout the range of these turtles.”
On the observer end, Smolowitz said the FSF wasn’t worried about the petition’s demand for adequate observer coverage to track turtle takes in commercial fisheries.
“The scallop fishery already has coverage in excess of what’s needed to assess encounter rates,” he said.
On the turtle assessment end, Zeman strongly criticized NMFS for failing to follow up on scientific recommendations.
“NMFS’s own working group said we really need quantitative data through in-water surveys or aerial surveys, definitely something more than nesting data,” he said.
Smolowitz concurred but added, “It’s not an easy thing to figure out.”
Aerial surveys might not give the agency a good picture of the population unless NMFS first conducts extensive turtle tagging work.
He also expressed skepticism over the efficacy of trawling for turtles.
In its petition, Oceana asked NMFS to establish “a quantitative method for determining take limits for biological opinions” and noted that the Turtle Expert Working Group concluded NMFS could accomplish this by establishing potential biological removal (PBR) limits for turtles, similar to the method currently used to cap marine mammal takes.
According to Smolowitz, the PBR approach “makes a lot of sense,” but it’s also fraught with problems.
“It requires a good population assessment, and we don’t have one,” he said. “You don’t want to allocate the takes among fisheries incorrectly.”
However it’s accomplished, Zeman said, “We need to know, ‘What is a sustainable take for these species?’”
Correct BioOps
Oceana further demanded that NMFS “correct” the information contained in a long list of biological opinions (BioOps) that were issued under the Endangered Species Act.
These include, among others, the BioOps for the following fisheries: scallops, Atlantic herring, dogfish, lobsters, deep-sea red crab, groundfish, tilefish, mackerel/squid/butterfish, bluefish, summer flounder/scup/black sea bass, Atlantic sharks, and the Atlantic pelagic longline fishery for highly migratory species.
According to Smolowitz, that demand would be impossible to meet.
“There’s not enough new information right now for NMFS to go back and change anything,” he said.
Smolowitz said that he, personally, has long supported many of the research demands that Oceana has made in its petition.
However, he criticized Oceana for overemphasizing the impacts of fishing gear on turtles while overlooking numerous other mortality factors in the petition.
“Coastal pollution and coastal development have a big impact on turtles,” Smolowitz said.
Janice M. Plante
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