On Wednesday, the Center for Biological Diversity led the charge in a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for alleged impacts of shrimp trawling on endangered sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Southeast Atlantic Ocean.
Conservation groups — including Oceana, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Sea Turtle Conservancy — notified NMFS of the intent to sue over the agency’s failure to complete an analysis on the impacts of shrimp trawling on sea turtles in the area, claiming shrimp trawlers operating in the southeast United States capture and kill more than 53,000 threatened sea turtles annually.
The legal action comes two years after the conservation groups settled a different lawsuit that sought to address more than 3,500 sea turtles that stranded dead or injured on beaches in the same areas in 2011. NMFS linked many of the deaths and injuries to capture in shrimp fishing nets.
Conservation groups settled the litigation with NMFS, which promised to propose a new rule to help protect sea turtles. According to Center for Biological Diversity instead of implementing the rule, the agency withdrew it.
“Since then, the agency has failed to complete a revised analysis of the impacts of shrimp trawling on sea turtles, even after acknowledging previous analyses were inadequate and did not account for poor compliance with existing restrictions,” the group said.
“We had high hopes that we were moving toward a solution for sea turtles, but once again the Fisheries Service has failed to actually implement the protective measures,” said Jaclyn Lopez, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The agency has gotten into a disturbing habit of initiating protections and then stalling them. Every day protections are delayed is another day that these sea turtles face the very real risk of drowning in shrimp nets.”
