Sea Turtle Bycatch: Accidental Capture in Fishing Gear

Sea turtles are frequently caught as bycatch in commercial fishing operations, causing drowning, injury, and death to these long-lived and endangered animals.

Key Facts

An estimated 250,000 sea turtles are accidentally caught in longline fishing gear each year globally.
Turtles caught in nets drown if they cannot reach the surface to breathe; entanglement time before death varies from minutes to hours.
All seven sea turtle species are listed as threatened or endangered on the IUCN Red List.
Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) — trapdoor mechanisms in trawl nets — allow turtles to escape and reduce bycatch by up to 97%.
Circle hooks used in longline fisheries reduce sea turtle hooking rates by 85% compared to J-hooks while maintaining target fish catch.
Ghost gear (lost or abandoned fishing equipment) entangles turtles long after active fishing has ceased.
Sea turtles reaching breeding age take 20-30 years, meaning bycatch deaths remove individuals representing decades of ocean survival.

Welfare Considerations

Drowning is a distressing death. Sea turtles caught in nets experience oxygen deprivation and physical restraint until they die — a process that can take considerable time depending on water depth and entanglement severity. Turtles caught on longline hooks suffer hook injuries to their mouths, flippers, or internal organs, and may remain alive on the line for hours. Even turtles that are retrieved alive often die after release from the physiological stress of capture. The solutions exist and work: TEDs, circle hooks, and time-area closures of high-bycatch zones can dramatically reduce the number of sea turtles caught. Implementation requires regulatory requirements and compliance monitoring that many fisheries currently lack.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or equivalent schemes that include bycatch reduction standards.
Ask restaurants and retailers about their bycatch reduction policies for sea turtles.
Support campaigns requiring mandatory TED use and circle hooks in fisheries operating in sea turtle habitat.
Donate to organisations working on ghost gear retrieval and responsible disposal.
Participate in or support beach monitoring programmes that track sea turtle nesting success.