A new tally of federally protected marine animals killed or injured when Hawaii-based longliner fishing boats accidentally catch them has some conservationists worried.
The numbers, they say, are troublingly high for several threatened and endangered species already struggling to survive. However, federal authorities maintain that it’s too early to step in and take added protective measures.
Commercial fishing crews released two dead sea turtles, including a critically endangered leatherback turtle, and two injured false killer whales from the lines that extend for miles off those fishing boats, according to federal observers who were aboard just a quarter of the total "deep-set" longliner fleet from July 1 through Sept. 30.
Seven black-footed albatross also were released dead from those lines, according to the observers. They monitor the fishing boats under a mandatory program launched 20 years ago by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Islands Regional Office.
Deep-set longliners typically set their fishing lines around 1,000 feet below the sea surface.
"Drowning and injuring this many turtles, whales and seabirds month after month is unacceptable," Todd Steiner, a biologist and executive director of the California-based Turtle Island Restoration Network, said in a statement Thursday. The marine conservation group says it has more than 150,000 members and "online activists" around the world.
"If the fishery cannot do a better job of reducing harm to sea turtles and whales, we will push for new limitations on (its) fishing effort," Steiner said.
Leatherback turtles are certainly in trouble: Their populations in the eastern Pacific have dramatically declined by more than 97 percent over the past three generations, going from more than 5,000 nesting females each year to fewer than 140, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has found.
Because the recent longliner observations covered only a fourth of Hawaii’s deep-set longliner fleet, Turtle Island estimates that a total of eight threatened turtles were killed and eight whales were injured by the entire deep-set fleet during the same three-month period.
"These numbers were pretty high," Steiner said in a phone interview Thursday. "I thought the public should be aware of what’s happening on a regular basis."
The tally, released earlier this month, doesn’t include any accidental catches by a separate class of Hawaii longliners: the "shallow-sets." Those vessels set their lines much closer to the sea surface, and the numbers for their accidental catches in the past three months have not yet been released.
Unlike the partial picture given for deep-set longliners, federal observers monitor the entire shallow-set longliner fleet.
Despite Turtle Island’s concerns about too many hookings and drownings, NOAA officials say that "at the current moment" the count of dead and injured protected animals found on deep-sea lines doesn’t further jeopardize any of those species’ existence.
"I don’t want to demean their concern … I get where the NGOs are coming from, that you don’t want to lose anything," said Patrick Opay, endangered species branch chief of the NOAA Fisheries Service Pacific Islands regional office, referring to Turtle Island and other nongovernmental organizations.
"The fact that they’re listed (as endangered and threatened species), the way that the law is listed, that doesn’t mean that you can’t even take one single" animal, Opay added.
In fact, many more of those protected species are predicted to be lost in the coming years. A NOAA report released in September projected that in the next three years the local deep-set longliner fleet will accidentally catch and kill three humpback whales, six sperm whales, nine North Pacific loggerhead turtles, 27 leatherback turtles, 96 Olive ridley turtles and nine green turtles — all without further jeopardizing those already threatened and endangered species, the agency contends.
When it comes to hooking turtles, the federal regulations appear more defined for Hawaii-based shallow-set longliners. Those longliners can accidentally catch up to 26 leatherback turtles and 34 loggerhead sea turtles annually before that fishery is shut down for the rest of the year.
Such "hard caps" on accidental hookings of sea turtles don’t apply to the deep-set longliner fleet. Instead, for the deep-sets it’s up to the NOAA regional office to monitor how many of the animals are getting hooked as the year progresses and to recommend taking action if it’s believed necessary.
Hawaii Longline Association President Sean Martin said the longliner fleet defers to NOAA’s regional office when it comes to the number of accidental catches allowed.
"I have an emotional attachment to the fishery just like environmentalists have an emotional attachment to the fishery’s action," Martin said Friday. Federal standards, he added, "take the emotion out of it" for everyone.
Similar commercial fleets from Asian countries fishing in the same waters as the Hawaii-based longliners aren’t subject to the same regulations on types of hooks and baits used or to other measures to protect marine species, Martin said.
"We’ve achieved reductions in albatross takes and turtle takes that are the model for the world," he added.
In 2012, Turtle Island sued to challenge the limits set for accidental catches of sea turtles by shallow-set longliners, arguing they were too loose and that they rolled back vital protections for the endangered leatherbacks and loggerheads.
"They are both on a trajectory to go extinct eventually, and being caught in fisheries is well known to be a major cause," Paul Achitoff, a lawyer with Earthjustice, said of the turtle species in 2012 when the suit was filed.
That court challenge is ongoing, Steiner said Thursday.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
