Sea Turtle Bycatch: Accidental Capture and Welfare Solutions

Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles are accidentally caught in fishing gear each year. Bycatch is a leading threat to all seven sea turtle species and causes significant suffering and mortality.

Key Facts

An estimated 250,000 sea turtles are accidentally caught in longline fisheries annually, with tens of thousands dying.
All seven sea turtle species are listed as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered.
Turtles caught in nets may drown within minutes if unable to surface; those on longlines may be entangled for hours.
Turtle excluder devices (TEDs) — escape hatches in trawl nets — reduce sea turtle bycatch by over 90% when properly used.
Circle hooks, used as an alternative to J-hooks in longline fisheries, reduce sea turtle bycatch by up to 90%.
Leatherback and loggerhead turtles are particularly vulnerable to longline bycatch due to their wide geographic ranges.
Many turtles caught as bycatch and returned to the sea suffer internal injuries, stress-related illness, or ingested hook injuries that cause delayed mortality.

Welfare Considerations

Sea turtle bycatch causes acute welfare harm during capture — drowning, hook injuries, entanglement trauma — and chronic suffering in animals that survive the initial capture but carry embedded hooks or sustain internal injuries. Turtles returned to the sea after bycatch events may appear recovered but suffer delayed mortality rates estimated at 10-40% depending on gear type and handling. The welfare solution is prevention: gear modifications including TEDs and circle hooks have been demonstrated to dramatically reduce both capture rates and mortality. Handling protocols for released bycatch turtles — removing hooks safely, minimising air exposure, returning animals carefully — also reduce welfare harm when encounters do occur. Effective enforcement of bycatch reduction requirements is the critical implementation gap.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) or similar schemes with bycatch reduction requirements.
Support Sea Turtle Conservancy, Oceana, and WWF campaigns for mandatory bycatch reduction gear.
Advocate for circle hook requirements in longline fisheries that interact with turtle habitats.
Report any sea turtle bycatch observations to relevant fisheries authorities.
Reduce consumption of seafood from high-bycatch fisheries where gear modification adoption remains low.