from ~50/month to 21 and 13 (1980 and 1981 respectively) on North Island 

 (Hopkins, pers. comm.) . 



Ironically, in April, 1981, some of these displaced South Carolina 

 fishermen obtained a North Carolina out-of-state commercial license and set 

 1500 yards of stationary 10 inch stretched-mesh gill nets on the Frying Pan 

 Shoals off Smith Island in North Carolina. (Sturgeon fishing has not 

 occurred here for more than 15 years). Within 10 days, between 30 and 47 

 loggerheads washed up in the immediate vicinity. This constituted "20% of 

 the total strandings reported in North Carolina in 1981. N.C. Wildlife 

 Enforcement Officer Joseph Newman inspected the nets one day and observed 4 

 turtles tangled in the nets (Newman, pers. comm.). The obvious relation- 

 ship between the South Carolina and North Carolina cases was noted by the 

 author while working on this project and the South Carolina information was 

 provided to Officer Newman, who gave a statement at the local public 

 hearings on marine fishing regulations (Newman, 24 February, 1982). The 

 N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries is currently reviewing proposed modifica- 

 tions to its regulations hoping to reduce this conflict. It should be 

 noted that a sturgeon fisherman who sets drift gill nets off the Bogue 

 Banks in North Carolina tends these nets every 1-2 hours, releasing turtles 

 and other incidentally caught species, with little or no mortality (Street, 

 pers. comm.) . 



2) Balazs (1980) has documented mortality to leatherback turtles due 

 to monofilament drift-nets set for squid in international waters northwest 

 of the Hawaiian Islands. This is a new (1979) fishery, involving nets up 

 to 16km in length and 6m in depth, with a 12cm (bar?) mesh, set overnight 

 by Japanese fishing vessels. Because of the distance from any shore, 

 quantification of mortality here is difficult but a single tuna boat 

 reported "at least 5 dead leatherbacks floating at the surface wrapped in 

 sections of net." Indeed, several tuna boats have become snarled in these 

 nets! 



Pound Nets — A number of people mentioned the incidental capture of 

 turtles in a variety of traps. Some of the best documentation of inciden- 

 tal catch outside the shrimping industry has been done on the pound net 

 fishery in Virginia by Molly Lutcavage and Jack Musick at the Virginia 

 Institute of Marine Sciences (Lutcavage, 1981; Musick, 1981). They 

 collected stranding reports on a total of 361 turtles throughout Virginia 

 in 1979 and 1980. Loggerheads were the primary species with a few ridleys 

 and leatherbacks included. Additionally, Lutcavage and Musick contacted 

 many fisherman. They concluded that pound nets were the principle source 

 of turtle mortalities in Virginia during these two years. Interestingly, 

 although turtles do become trapped in the pounds, they are able to breathe 

 here and are usually released, unharmed, by the fisherman. The mortality 

 is caused by entanglement in the large-meshed leaders ("hedges"), 

 frequently well below the surface, where they go unnoticed, and therefore 

 unreleased. These leaders act like infrequently tended large-meshed gill 

 nets. 



Although turtles were caught less frequently in smaller-meshed 

 leaders, these tend to foul more readily and are therefore less desirable 



