Sea turtle (credit Science Daily)
I was doing my daily peruse of Science Daily and came across this article in the endangered species link.
A new article was published in Biological Conservation that estimates about 4,600 sea turtles die each year in U.S. coastal waters as a result of bycatch in many fisheries (still unacceptably high). Though high, this number is drastically lower than numbers prior to 1990 when sea turtle deaths surpassed 70,000 annually! This difference represents a 90% decrease in sea turtles deaths since 1990.
The authors credit this remarkable reduction to both the reduction in U.S. fishery activity and the measures implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to reduce bycatch.
All and all, a “win” for the NMFS and endangered sea turtles.