Large-mesh drift gillnet fishing has been temporarily banned in a loggerhead turtle conservation area off the southern California coast in order to give the endangered species a chance to travel to the region to feed.
The National Marine Fisheries Service announced the closure would run from June 1, 2024 through August 31, 2024, citing El Niño conditions affecting the Pacific Loggerhead Conservation Area in the Southern California Bight, which runs from Santa Barbara to just south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Warmer waters off the coast have created conditions favorable to pelagic red crabs, also known as tuna crabs or lobster krill, which attract more loggerheads to the area to feed on them. The temporary ban would allow the federally protected species time to travel through the region.
“I’m so relieved endangered loggerhead sea turtles will get this crucial reprieve from entangling fishing nets while they search for food off Southern California,” said Catherine Kilduff, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Loggerheads already face warming waters and changing habitat in their struggle to survive, and they don’t need the added threat of a deadly fishing net maze.”
Earlier this month, the Center for Biological Diversity sent a letter to NOAA requesting the closure.
Gillnet fishing uses a wall of netting that hangs in the water to entrap fish, sometimes extending as far as a mile wide and up to 200 feet under the ocean’s surface. It is particularly deadly for sea turtles, because they can quickly become entangled and drown. Regulations require NOAA to close the conservation area to gillnet fishing when conditions that draw more loggerhead sea turtles to the region occur.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act as part of a $1.7 trillion federal omnibus spending bill, which will permanently phase out the use of large-mesh drift gillnets over several years.
