Sea turtles are caught as bycatch in longlines, trawls, and gillnets in their thousands annually, causing drowning, injury, and death that threatens multiple endangered species despite decades of conservation effort.
Sea turtle bycatch causes welfare harm on a vast scale that is largely invisible to consumers of seafood. Turtles entangled in longlines and trawls experience prolonged struggling before exhaustion and drowning. Those caught in longline hooks experience hook injuries to mouths, throats, and flippers — injuries that require weeks of treatment in rehabilitation facilities. The stress of capture, boat exposure, and handling adds to the welfare burden even for turtles that survive. Technological solutions exist and are effective: TEDs are mandatory in shrimp trawl fisheries in the US and reduce turtle bycatch to near-zero in compliant vessels. Circle hooks dramatically reduce longline interactions. Observer programs that monitor bycatch rates drive compliance and data collection. The welfare improvement from these technologies at scale is enormous — preventing thousands of individual animal drownings and injuries annually. Consumer choices in seafood, and advocacy for fishing gear regulations, directly translate to welfare outcomes for hundreds of thousands of sea turtles.