After Eight Years, NMFS Finds Longliners Jeopardize Sea Turtles

posted in: April 2001 | 0

The 114 or so vessels in the Honolulu-based longline fishing fleet have been grounded by a court-imposed closure. And if the March 15 closure, set to last 45 days, wasn’t enough bad news, on its eve came a development that alarmed Hawai`i’s commercial fishing sector still further: the release of a draft biological opinion on the impacts of the longline fleet on turtles that calls for five months each year would shut longliners out of nearly 2 million square miles of waters south of the Main Hawaiian Islands.

The shutdown of the fishery was ordered by federal District Judge David A. Ezra. Ezra is presiding over a lawsuit brought in 1999 against the National Marine Fisheries Service by two conservation groups alleging that the accidental hooking of turtles by longliners is high enough to prevent the turtle populations from recovering. Ezra issued an injunction in August 2000 that kept most longliners out of swordfish grounds in the Northern Pacific, ordered NMFS to prepare an environmental impact statement that addresses the fishery’s impacts on protected species, and, starting March 15, closed down the longline fishery altogether until June 1, or whenever NMFS completed its EIS.

Less than a week before the March 15 closure, NMFS released a draft biological opinion describing the fishery’s impact on turtles and other protected marine species. Under the Endangered Species Act, such opinion is an agency’s formal determination as to whether a government-sanctioned activity will harm a listed endangered or threatened animal or plant. If the harm is deemed to be at high enough to prevent the species’ recovery, a finding of jeopardy is issued.

And, indeed, the biological opinion concluded that a jeopardy finding was in order for the fishery’s impact on leatherback turtles. With no changes to the fishery, the service calculated that the number of leatherbacks hooked by longliners is between 68 and 162 a year, with about 61 of those resulting in death. About 86 percent, or 52, of those deaths will be of western Pacific leatherbacks, whose numbers are critically low. If those turtles aren’t replaced by “equal or greater numbers of maturing turtles,” the biological opinion states, “as many as 468 adult leatherback turtles will have been permanently removed from the western Pacific population within the next 25 years.”

Even if there were no other longliners taking leatherbacks from this population, given the population’s extremely small size, the fishery service says, “this is an appreciable reduction in the population size and reproductive capacity that would be expected to appreciably increase this population’s risk of extinction.”

A similar finding was made for the green sea turtle. At current levels, up to 600 adult green turtles “will be permanently removed from the eastern Pacific population of green turtles over the next 25 years,” the opinion states. “Removing these numbers É from this declining population would be expected to É reduce or eliminate this population’s ability to recover from its high rate of decline.” Although the Hawaiian population is more numerous than the eastern Pacific population, it, too, was found to be jeopardized by the longlining. “[B]etween 75 and 325 adult and sub-adult green turtles would be killed in the fishery in the time it would take eggs from the 2001 cohort to recruit into the adult, breeding population,” the document says. “Although this population has been increasing slowly, we do not know how this level of adult or sub-adult mortality would affect this population’s status or trend. The isolation and genetic distinctness of this population, combined with a high incidence of often fatal fibropapilloma, predisposes the Hawaiian population to a higher risk of extinction. It is reasonable to expect that compounding this higher risk of extinction with adult and sub-adult mortalities from pelagic fisheries would appreciably reduce the Hawaiian population’s likelihood of survival and recovery in the wild.”

Two additional species of turtle were considered: the loggerhead and the olive ridley. The loggerhead turtle, like the green and the leatherback, was found to be placed in jeopardy by ongoing longline fishing. Only for the olive ridley did NMFS make a finding of no jeopardy.

Reasonable and Prudent

To lessen the fishery’s impact, NMFS proposed several “reasonable and prudent alternatives.” One would ban permanently the setting of shallow hooks, a technique used in targeting swordfish. Judge Ezra had already imposed a ban on such sets, but as soon as the court order is lifted – something that might occur as soon as April 1 – his prohibition would no longer be in effect. This measure would have the most beneficial effect on loggerhead turtles, nearly all of which were caught on shallow-set lines.

The second proposed alternative would impose time and area closures for deeper-set hooks, used in catching tuna. “Immediate mortality rates of turtles caught in the tuna-style gear segment of the Hawai`i-based longline fishery are very high,” the opinion notes. To mitigate this harm, the service is proposing closure of approximately 2 million square miles of the Pacific south of the Main Hawaiian Islands from January 15 to June 15. This should keep the fleet out of the waters when leatherbacks are thought to be crossing the area en route to nesting beaches in Papua New Guinea. The time-area closure, the service says, should reduce the likelihood that the longliners will contribute to the decline of leatherbacks and green turtles. “However,” the service cautions, “NMFS is not certain that this closure will avoid all future leatherback and green turtle takes.”

The remaining reasonable and prudent measures outlined in the draft biological opinion have to do with educating skippers, crew, and observers in ways to deal with turtles after they are hooked. Methods include required workshops, turtle resuscitation efforts, and the use of dip nets and line clippers to help turtles survive hookings.

Not included in the draft biological opinion – but presented to the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council by NMFS director William Hogarth when the council met on March 13 – was yet another alternative: establishment of a so-called experimental fishery. This would involve the government chartering privately run fishing vessels and having them fish, at the direction of NMFS scientists, in areas where turtle hookings have been observed to occur with greatest frequency. The idea is to try out various gear types, baits, and other measures to see if by varying these, some techniques will be found to be less harmful to turtles than others. To do this, the agency needs to obtain a Section 10 permit (under the Endangered Species Act), which, according to Hogarth, it has already applied for.

A Turn-around

Most of those who testified at the council’s meeting were from the fishing community. As might be expected, they were largely – and loudly – opposed to the draft biological opinion.

One of the few contrary voices was that of Mark Powell, representing the Center for Marine Conservation, one of the plaintiffs in the sea turtle lawsuit. “Pacific sea turtles have been neglected by the council and the National Marine Fisheries Service for far too long,” Powell said. “Concerns have been raised for the past eight years, by the Center for Marine Conservation and others, É but these words fell on deaf ears.”

He proceeded to quote from letters CMC had sent over the years, noting that the rates of interaction with turtles “cannot be sustained over time.”

“Eight years ago, CMC sought cooperative action, asking for turtle protections that minimize impacts of longline fishingÉ. It took a court order to begin the process of protecting turtles.”

Jim Cook, part owner of several longline vessels and chair of the council for most of the last eight years, conceded Powell’s point. “We could have done more on this problem,” he told the council. “We should have done more,” he said, adding that because of the inaction, “people in this room” (members of the longline community, for the most part) had had to pay “$400,000 to $500,000 in legal fees over the last year.”

“But the past is the past,” he continued, “It’s time to look ahead to the future.”

With that, Cook denounced the proposed biological opinion as “voodoo science.” As recently as 1998, the service issued a no-jeopardy biological opinion for the longliners, he noted. “You gave us incidental take statements [that indicated] this fishery operated very, very well. Now all that’s out the window. The incidental take has been reduced 80 percent or more. Someone needs to give a scientific reason,” he said, calling for the service to “start over again with a new biological opinion.”

After hearing from more than a dozen other members of the fishing community, the council approved 10 separate motions. One requested that NMFS reconsider the draft biological opinion and “consult with the council in the development of a reasonable approach to jeopardy.” The council urged the Department of State to push for international action to “conserve marine resources, particularly threatened or endangered species.” Echoing statements made by several of those testifying, the council accused NMFS of applying inconsistent criteria in its development of incidental take statements and “demanded” it take corrective action. The council also “demanded” that it be included in the Section 7 consultation process, under the Endangered Species Act – although by law, councils are not included and, in fact, the NMFS had only made public the draft biological opinion as a courtesy to the council.

Objecting to the biological opinion’s “reasonable and prudent alternatives,” the council again “demanded” that the prohibition on shallow-set lines “be withdrawn,” claiming this would discourage development of longline fleets in U.S.-flagged island territories of the Pacific.

Next Steps

When NMFS completes its environmental impact statement, Judge Ezra has indicated he would probably modify his injunction to conform to the preferred alternative. In the draft EIS, prepared before the biological opinion was completed, one of the major management measures called for in the preferred alternative is a two-month annual closure of all areas during April and May.

Will the preferred alternative in the final EIS reflect the closed area south of Hawai`i proposed in the draft biological opinion? Yes, say sources at NMFS.

If so, the relief that Cook and others are expecting should the judge amend his injunction to reflect the preferred alternative in the final EIS may not be all they were hoping for. Not only will the longliners be grounded for at least as long as the judge’s injunction, but even after the fishery reopens (June 1), they will be barred from 2 million miles south of the Main Hawaiian Islands until June 15.

This Just in:

U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra has modified his earlier ban on the Honolulu-based longline fleet. In an order March 30, reflecting the new environmental impact statement for longline fishing, Ezra banned all swordfishing and imposed a moratorium on longline tuna fishing in April and May in an area south of Hawai`i.

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 11, Number 10 April 2001