The Biggest Threat To Sea Turtles Isn't Egg Poaching

 

     It absolutely irks me when people say that sea turtle egg poachers are just poor folks trying to feed their families for two reasons: A) poverty is not an excuse for humans to drive species to extinction; money is expendable but life is not, and B) it is simply not true. Especially in Latin America, where most sea turtle egg poaching takes place, the wildlife trade is directly linked to the violent cartels and other criminal syndicates who are not poor and are impossible to defend. Those who profit off of sea turtles eggs profit off of not just shark fins, but also cocaine, weapons, and sometimes even human beings, and in too many countries in the region the people who are supposed to enforce the law are bought off by these criminals.

     Even with the horrible impact of sea turtle egg poaching, this alone is not what is driving them to extinction, nor is the legal (albeit barbaric and wrong) hunting taking place in countries like Australia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. Nature is resilient, and sea turtles could survive this direct hunting. Add in chemical pollution and marine debris, and sea turtles have been pushed over the edge. However, six out of seven sea turtle species are endangered, two critically, and the missing link is fishing.

     The United States has had to learn this lesson, especially with longline vessels and shrimp trawlers. It wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s, when fisheries reform took effect, that sea turtles began to recover from the brink of extirpation in U.S. waters. Driftnets and gillnets were almost entirely banned and trawlers were required to use Turtle Exclusion Devices (TEDs), which allow sea turtles to escape from being caught as bycatch. The results are impossible to refute. In the United States, sea turtles have not only recovered, but are seeing record nesting numbers. In the rest of the Atlantic, which includes nations in Europe, sea turtles are, as a whole, recovering fairly well. It is in the Pacific and Indian Oceans that sea turtles are declining precariously: the leatherbacks in the Eastern Tropical Pacific by more than 97 percent. These Asian, African, and Latin American countries have been subject to the highest fishing pressure with the lowest capacity for either regulating or enforcing regulations on the fishing industry.

     The answer is crystal clear: the fishing industry itself will never clean up its act, and many poor countries are still decades away from having the capacity to prioritize sea turtle conservation. For these incredible animals, that will be too late. If we want to save sea turtles from extinction, the people in Europe and North America, the people who have a choice, need to stop eating seafood.