April 4, 2019 — It doesn’t matter that all of the 17 loggerhead turtles that were accidentally caught in the first three months of the year by shallow-set swordfish longliners off the coasts of the US’ Hawaiian islands were released and swam away alive, or that the loggerhead population in the area has actually been growing at a steady rate of 2.4% annually.
Thanks to the terms of a court settlement reached nearly a year ago by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) with three nongovernmental organizations, that number of interactions with an endangered species forced the longliners to shut down immediately for the season on March 19, leaving much of what they say is a healthy fishing stock untouched.
Now the harvesters are counting on a regular meeting by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WPRFMC), scheduled for April 12, in Honolulu, to help get them back on the water as soon as possible.
That’s when an advisory panel is expected to review NMFS’ new draft biological opinion (BiOps) for handling both loggerhead and leatherneck turtles in the fishery and advise the council, which that same day could pass along its own recommendations to NMFS.