Fishermen to Protect Sea Turtles

Published: September 3, 2007, 6:37 am

In the summer of 2002, Anselmo Ruiz-Camacho, a halibut fisherman in Baja California, Mexico, asked Hoyt Peckham, "How can loggerhead turtles possibly be endangered when I caught 30 in my nets this morning?" All but two of the incidentally caught turtles were dead.The question astonished Peckham, a scientist with Pro Peninsula and University of California-Santa Cruz PhD candidate. He knew that fewer than 1,500 loggerheads nested in the North Pacific the winter before, and, despite conservation efforts, nesting has declined 50 to 80 percent over the past decade. The Ruiz-Camacho loggerheads appeared to be numerous because the turtles regularly aggregate off the Baja California peninsula. Highly migratory creatures, the turtles hatch on the beaches of southern Japan and then migrate across the Pacific to Baja California via the Hawaiian Islands. When reproductively mature, they return to Japan to mate and nest.Now a unique program, the Tri-national Fishermen's Exchange, is bringing

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