For many of us, an encounter with a sea turtle is seen as a fantastic experience. For those of us who don’t get to spend much time diving in areas where these turtles are common, such an encounter is truly memorable – it might even be a pinnacle experience. For pirate fishermen who either target these animals, or who catch them while targeting other species, the turtles represent dollar signs or are simply viewed as a nuisance or as bycatch. Here, we’ll examine the remarkable case of one single sea turtle that survived an encounter with such a pirate, and we’ll see what is being done to help prevent turtles from becoming victims of illegal fishing practices.
The Story of Swift
Swift is an endangered green sea turtle. He is one of seventeen turtles that have been tagged with satellite transmitters as part of a turtle conservation program sponsored by the Cocos Island Monitoring and Research (C-MAR) project, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, and Pretoma, a Costa Rican conservation group. In August of 2012, Swift was released into Chatham Bay, an area where sea turtles are protected by law.
A few months later, rangers working at Cocos Island found Swift. He had been hooked by fishermen who were illegally working in protected waters. The fishermen had released Swift alive, but he was injured. Of the many sea turtles caught with longlines and in gillnets each year, Swift was fortunate. The fact he had a tracking device cemented to his shell very well may have contributed to the fishermen’s decision to release him rather than killing him.
Pirate Fishermen at Cocos Island
Though the waters around Cocos Island are a no fishing zone, pirate fishermen frequent the area in search of sharks, which they fin and ship to Asia to feed the demand for shark fin soup. Cocos Island is also known as Shark Island, and is home to a number of different shark species, including scalloped hammerheads, whale sharks, and white-tipped reef sharks. All of them are targets for illegal fishing.
Other wildlife like dolphins, whales, seabirds, and sea turtles like Swift fall victim to the long line fishing gear the pirate fishermen use. These lines are not like the fishing lines recreational fishing enthusiasts deploy; instead, they contain anywhere from hundreds to thousands of baited hooks designed to maximize the number of sharks the fishermen can capture in a single deployment. The park rangers working in the Cocos Island preserve have amassed an entire mountain of such gear that has been confiscated from illegal fishermen.
According to biologist Todd Steiner, who is the Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s executive director, the problem is widespread. “When fishers are willing to risk losing many thousands of dollars of gear, it confirms that this is not an isolated incident,” he said.
Tracking the sea turtles, including the critically endangered leatherback turtles that live around Cocos Island is a good way to monitor the population and deter poaching. In addition, the researchers have been using the data the transceivers send to track the turtles’ migration paths. Eventually, protected swimways will be established between the turtles’ nesting and feeding areas. With continued tracking and increased enforcement, we hope the world’s pirate fishermen will find that capturing endangered species is no longer profitable enough to be worth the effort.