Kemp’s Ridleys, an endangered species of sea turtles, are washing up dead in record numbers on the Mississippi coast — but most of them are not displaying obvious signs of oil-contamination.
Dr. Brian Stacy, a veterinarian pathologist employed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, conducts necropsies on the dead sea turtles found on beaches after the BP oil spill. Oil is not the direct killer for many of the dead sea turtles, but fisheries interaction is a culprit.Marine turtles are air-breathing reptiles that must periodically surface from the sea for oxygen. “Drowning is a concern, as is acute exposure to a toxin,” Stacey told The New York Times. By July 12, more than 460 dead marine turtles had been reported to the Unified Area Command, which is overseeing the Deepwater Horizon spill response.
Wildlife mortality statistics are liable to be inflated this year because of the high volume of oil spill respondents tagging, collecting and sending animal carcasses to Stacy’s Gainesville, Fla., laboratory for necropsies. Nevertheless, the spike in fish and wildlife fatalities this season is indirectly attributable to the rig blowout and oil spill.
The Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles washing up in Mississippi are dying incidentally from the oil spill; the turtles’ shells, underbellies and mouths may be clean of oil, but pieces of shrimp found lodged in a turtle’s esophagus, or traces of sediment found in its lungs, send up red flags that the turtle was entrapped by a shrimper’s net and drowned.
Marine sea turtles are thought to be migrating further inland to escape the massive slicks of oil pooling in the Gulf, in the meantime skirting the pathways of commercial fishermen. The peril is all the greater when Mississippian shrimpers, taking advantage of the Coast Guard’s preoccupation with spill cleanup, neglect to use their trawling nets’ federally required Turtle Excluder Devices.
The T.E.D. is a modification on shrimping nets that serves as an escape hatch for sea turtles caught in commercial shrimpers’ nets.
A shrimp net’s T.E.D. consists of “a grid of bars with an opening either at the top or bottom of the trawl net,” according to the NOAA Fisheries Office of Protected Resources.
The T.E.D. acts as a filter for shrimp and small fish to pass into the trawl net but excludes incidental catches, freeing larger animals such as sharks or sea turtles from being caught in the shrimp nets.
An adult sea turtle can normally hold its breath for several hours underwater, but a turtle that is entangled in a shrimping net may panic, and deplete its oxygen reserves rapidly in distress. Since shrimpers trawl with their nets beneath the surface for long periods of time, any sea turtles that are unable to surface for air may drown in the shrimpers’ nets.
Louisiana shrimpers are especially prone to incidentally catching sea turtles, since the laws on T.E.D. regulations in the state are lax — Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement agents in Louisiana are prohibited from enforcing T.E.D. regulations.
Sea turtles are protected by the federal government under the Endangered Species Act.
Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement agents patrol the Gulf of Mexico to check that commercial fishers and shrimpers are abiding by federal regulations to ensure the sea turtles’ safety, but three days after Mississippi’s shrimping season began, 12 dead turtles were found on Mississippi beaches.
Mississippi, nevertheless, has taken the initiative to reduce the allowable towing-times for shrimpers to drag their nets underwater, and the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources has distributed pamphlets to commercial fishermen with instructions on resuscitating unconscious turtles.
Louisiana, too, must take progressive steps to enforce T.E.D. regulations for commercial fishermen, so that endangered marine turtles, like the Kemp’s Ridley and Loggerhead, will not meet their demise in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
—-Contact Trevor Fanning at [email protected].