New research is confirming that small coastal fishing efforts, including along the Pacific coast of Mexico?s Baja peninsula, pose a substantial threat to several endangered sea turtle species. There?s much that can be done to cut turtle losses, as you?ll be learning later this spring when Pace University students making this year?s spring documentary (for a course I co-teach) wrap their short film in early May. (The previous films are here.)
In the meantime, a blog post by Lou Guarneri points to the new study and photographs by Samantha Finch and Nick Gazhs provide a grim view of loggerhead turtle carcasses that wash up on one beach, near the fishing town of Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos (where I had an odd dog encounter).
Here?s part of Guarneri?s post:
We just got back from??Playa de Los Muertos? ? a beautiful stretch of Pacific Ocean beach that is jarringly littered with dead marine life ? in the Baja region of Mexico. The carcasses of loggerhead turtles that drown when tangled in local fishermen?s nets a few miles offshore wash up almost daily.
We spoke with?the local lighthouse keeper,?Victor de la Toba, and learned about his efforts to track turtle mortality and encourage shifts in fishing practices.
Our visit to the beach and nearby Magdalena Bay made it particularly distressing to read a news release this morning from Conservation International about a new research paper confirming that the area we?re focusing on in our film is a hot spot for ?bycatch? mortality of sea turtles.
Here?s an excerpt:
The most comprehensive global evaluation of fisheries bycatch impacts on large marine species, published this month in the journal?Ecosphere, revealed that sea turtle populations in the East Pacific, North Atlantic, Southwest Atlantic, and Mediterranean face higher bycatch and mortality rates. The study also highlighted information gaps that are blocking further assessments of impacts, and found that bycatch rates in small-scale fisheries in nearshore areas rival those of large-scale fisheries in the open ocean?.?
?Bycatch in small-scale fisheries is rarely monitored or regulated, but can have disproportionately large impacts on turtles and other bycatch species,? Wallace added. ?But these fisheries are also disproportionately important socioeconomically for coastal communities worldwide, so bycatch reduction has to be balanced with the livelihoods of fishermen.??
To learn more, check out the?full study, or go to?Conservation International?s website.?You can also check out this?remarkable article, published?late last year from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting offered?a chilling look at the resistance of local fishing cooperatives?to ideas that might cut the death toll.
Click here for the full post at the Pace Baja blog.
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