Small-scale fishing threatens loggerheads

From a press release issued by the Ocean Conservancy:

Washington, DC — Ocean Conservancy Scientist, Wallace J. Nichols and University of California (UC)-Santa Cruz researcher Hoyt Peckham found surprising results in a recent peer-reviewed loggerhead sea turtle study that Nichols and Peckham conducted over the course of 10 years. The full study will be released on October 17th. The study reveals that small-scale fishing operations are a greater threat to the survival of north Pacific loggerhead sea turtles than large industrial fishing operations.

The species is seriously threatened. As The New York Times recently editorialized, “For an oceanic species such as the loggerhead, these are incredibly dangerous times. It is partly the longevity of these creatures that makes their death as bystanders among the global fishing fleets feel so tragic, a truly colossal waste of life.”