Keeping Turtles Down: The NMFS Biological Opinion
The biological opinion on sea turtles issued last month by the National Marine Fisheries Service may be fairly described as schizophrenic.
While recognizing the parlous straits of the creatures, which continue to be injured and killed regularly by the Hawai`i longline fleet, the agency gives itself permission to allow the ongoing “take” of turtles, at numbers even higher than those previously permitted.
In doing so, it follows a pattern, set when the first biological opinion on turtles was exceeded a year after it was issued. Instead of imposing any sanctions on the fleet, instead of requiring measures be taken that might reduce turtle take, the agency simply ratchets up the number of turtles that may legally be taken as incidental catch in the longline fishery. Instead of discussing the biological risks to the species that result from removing a specified number of turtles from given populations, the biological opinion goes to great effort to calculate the projected number of takes in the longline fishery, then simply declares that takes at this level pose no harm to the species’ survival.
Yet in the time it has taken NMFS to prepare this document — some three years — the agency has acquired knowledge that the turtles in the waters fished by the Hawai`i fleet may include animals that are so important to breeding populations that the serious injury or death of even one could be devastating. And so, even as the biological opinion gives the fleet leave to catch 244 leatherbacks a year (19 of which may be mortally injured in the process), it simultaneously requires NMFS to review the circumstances any time a leatherback is taken. If the animal is seriously injured or killed, “NMFS shall immediately initiate a review and assessment of the effects of the take, and verify that the conclusions of this Biological Opinion regarding leatherback sea turtles remain valid… In the event that this review reveals new information regarding the effects of the take on the leatherback population, NMFS shall immediately reinitiate consultation to determine methods to minimize the effects of additional taking.”
Whoa. Isn’t that just what NMFS should be doing now?
Instead, the biological opinion gives NMFS a leisurely two years to develop educational materials for fishers and allows it the same time to “develop and implement” studies on fishing methods that might be less harmful to turtles.
Actually, in requiring the review of leatherback takings, what the biological opinion may in fact accomplish is further underreporting in vessel logbooks of interactions with any turtles. Already, comparison between observer logs and the fishers’ own records shows that the take of turtles is substantially underreported, to the point that the vessel logbooks are useless for statistical purposes, so far as turtle catch is concerned. The biological opinion acknowledges this openly.
Unless there can be 100 percent observer coverage on a fleet that balks at accepting even a tenth of that, the odds would seem to be in favor of NMFS’ new biological opinion resulting in even less candor in the logbooks.
In short, far from advancing the prospects of any turtle species recovering to the point it can be removed from the endangered or threatened list, the biological opinion looks extinction in the face, and flinches not.
Albatross Workshop Won’t Save Birds
For five years at least, the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council has known that the Hawai`i longline fishery each year kills thousands of seabirds. Regulatory bodies around the world have faced the same problem; nearly all have responded by requiring vessels to employ techniques that make it more difficult for seabirds to snatch baitfish as hooks are being set.
But not the council. Instead, it has sponsored workshops, translated educational materials into the languages spoken (if not read) by fishers, and uttered hortatory statements — all of which have had the effect of sparing not one bird’s life.
Increasingly, Hawai`i is acquiring a reputation nationally and internationally as a holdout against enlightened thought, so far as seabird hookings are concerned. Of course it is important to know what impact the hookings are having on breeding populations of black-footed albatross, which was the subject of the council’s most recent effort. But endless study is no substitute for action, especially when simple, cheap devices are known to be effective in reducing seabird deaths.
If the short-tailed albatross is finally listed as endangered in its U.S. range, as the Fish and Wildlife Service has recently proposed, the council may finally be forced to adopt meaningful, legally enforceable rules to protect seabirds. But why should it wait? The same devices that protect short-tails also protect Laysan and black-foots. Protecting them all is simply the right thing to do, and the council should do it with dispatch.
Volume 9, Number 6 December 1998