Since 1980, the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami, Florida, has maintained the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network database. The Stranding Network , a network of private citizens, state and federal agencies from the coastal states of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and was established to document and collect important information on sea turtles that strand along the coast. In the year 2000 alone, the preliminary data indicate that the number of sea turtles that stranded along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico was 3,136. In previous years from 1991 through 1999, the average number of strandings for this area was 2,382 annually. The strandings had their highest increase in the mid-Atlantic states and the Gulf coast of Florida.
Many human activities contribute to strandings.
Some of the turtles that strand have fishing gear such as gillnets or hooks and line attached to the carcass. Domestic and international, commercial and recreational fisheries that deploy gillnets, trawls, pots, pound nets, longlines and hook and line are all known to accidentally kill or injure turtles with their fishing gear. Dredging operations and power plants as well as boating activities are also documented to accidentally kill or injure turtles. Disturbance of nests and nesting turtles on beaches, and the harvest of adults in some nations may also impact some of the same turtles that forage in U.S. waters. Turtles may also ingest or become entangled in marine debris.