A presentation by Todd Steiner, Director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project of Earth Island Institute.
Sea turtles drown unnecessarily in shrimp nets in huge numbers.
50,000 turtles were caught each year by shrimpers in U.S. waters. 60,000 turtles are caught off the coast of Central America by a few hundred vessels. And probably hundreds of thousands more drown each year in Asia, South America, Africa and Mexico. Sea turtles have become the marine version of the canary in the mine, and conservationists researching impacts of shrimp trawling on sea turtles quickly realized sea turtle mortality was just the tip of the iceberg. Shrimp trawling has been recognized as the most wasteful commercial fishery in the world.