April 16, 2015 — Tens of thousands of sea turtles are estimated to be killed each year by shrimping nets in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, and an environmental group is suing federal regulators to do a better job protecting the endangered species.
But South Carolina waters are not a focus of the lawsuit — the waters off Gulf states are — and Oceana staffers concede the Palmetto State is a leader in conservation efforts.
At the heart of the suit is a demand that the National Marine Fisheries Service better enforce the use of TEDs, turtle excluder devices. South Carolina led the nation in requiring the cone-shaped escape funnels, among a number of other relatively strict protections.
Nesting numbers and the number of juveniles in the waters now have wildlife biologists “cautiously optimistic” the turtles are recovering here, after years of decline.
Using numbers from the service’s own 2014 study of turtle “by-catch” by shrimping nets, Oceana alleges the shrimp harvest takes as many as half a million sea turtles per year and kills as many as 50,000. That take has an effect on the population, but not enough to stop the take, the study concluded.
Read the full story from The Post and Courier