Socioeconomic Importance of Sea Turtles 



Incidental Capture (Michael Weber) 



Effects of Incidental Catch 



As noted at the 1979 World Conference on Sea Turtle 

 Conservation in Washington, D.C., little attention has generally 

 been paid to reducing pressure on wild populations of sea turtles 

 arising from incidental capture and mortality chiefly in 

 connection with fishing activities. Early restrictions on the 

 deployment of gill nets set for sturgeon in North and South 

 Carolina were the exception until recently. The imminent use of 

 Turtle Excluder Devices (TED) in the southeastern shrimp fishery 

 of the United States is clearly only a beginning in reducing 

 shrimp fisheries' capture of sea turtles, particularly endangered 

 sea turtles as the Kemp's ridley. 



The relatively low priority accorded incidental capture in 

 sea turtle conservation efforts in the past does not mean that 

 the problem has been unrecognized. In an lUCN monograph 

 Pritchard and Marquez (1973) remarked of the problems confronting 

 the vanishing Kemp's ridley: 



"Probably the most serious problem of all, 

 however, and the hardest to control, is the accidental 

 capture and drowning of ridleys in shrimp trawls, and 

 to a lesser extent, shark nets, particularly as they 

 migrate to and from the nesting grounds. Of the 285 

 female ridleys tagged by Chavez in 1966, at least 17 

 had been caught in these ways by August 1967; and at 

 least 6 of the 80 tagged by Pritchard in 1970 have 

 already been caught, and the tags returned." 

 (Pritchard and Marquez, 1973.) 



Until the promulgation of TED regulations in the U.S., however, 

 this problem went unaddressed. And the situation only worsened. 

 Despite one of the most intensive recovery efforts ever directed 

 at a species of sea turtle, the Kemp's ridley population has 

 continued to decline at a rate of three percent per year since 

 1978 (J. Woody, pers. comm.). The TED regulations in the U.S. 

 come not a moment too soon. And we must hope that Mexico 

 continues its recent efforts to address the capture of Kemp's 

 ridleys in its shrimp fishery. 



The impact of incidental capture of sea turtles in shrimp 

 trawls and other fishing gear is not limited to Kemp's ridleys. 

 Colin Higgs considered incidental capture in shrimp trawls off 

 Surinam and French Guiana as a primary cause of the decline of 

 olive ridleys in the region (Bacon et al. 1984). Nor can 

 conservationists in the United States be complacent about the 

 more abundant loggerhead sea turtles. Nesting populations in 



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