For the estimated 150,000 sea turtles caught in shrimp trawl nets every year, TEDs are a practical method of saving lives. They also protect local fishery stocks by permitting bycatch, or nontargeted fish, to escape as well. While the evidence for the Orissa massacre points to destructive fishing practices, such as shrimp trawling and gill netting, the government is slow to move. Indian activists call for increased enforcement of a coastal fishing ban, the mandatory use of TEDs, and immediate action to address the impacts of gill netting. The decline of the sea turtles All seven species of sea turtles have been listed as endangered, threatened, or vulnerable by the US Endangered Species Act, the IUCN Red List, and international treaties.
Luxury hotels destroy natal nesting beaches.
Sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, a favorite food, and choke to death. But perhaps the greatest threats to sea turtles are the increasing consumption of seafood and unsustainable commercial fishing methods. Drift nets may be responsible for hundreds of thousands of sea turtle deaths every year. Longline fleets, which set up to 10 billion hooks in the ocean every year for swordfish and tuna, kill countless numbers of sea turtles. And in 1990, the US National Academy of Sciences concluded that in US waters, more sea turtles die from shrimp trawling than from all other human causes combined.