The Pacific Leatherback sea turtle has swum the world's oceans for 100 million years.  Weighing up to 2000 pounds and reaching a length upwards of 8 feet, it is the last survivor of the Age of Giant Reptiles.  The Leatherback survived the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, yet scientists now warn that this species could go extinct in the Pacific in the next five to 30 years unless efforts are made to reduce the threat of being killed by destructive fishing gear.   Since 1984, the number of nesting female Pacific Leatherbacks declined by 95 percent in the face of expanding gillnet and longline fisheries.

Drift-gillnets (sometimes called "driftnets") are set to catch swordfish, tunas and sharks.  Yet these indiscriminate curtains of death, which can stretch for over a mile, entangle and kill anything unfortunate enough to swim into them.  Large scale drift-gillnets have been banned by the U.N. in international waters, and the drift-gillnet fishery for swordfish on the Atlantic Coast of the United States was closed many years ago.  Nevertheless, this antiquated fishery continues to operate off the California and Oregon coasts, killing not just sea turtles, but also whales, dolphins, seabirds and sharks.

In 2000, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), forcing the agency to create the Pacific Leatherback Conservation Area to protect the critically endangered Leatherback.  This Conservation Area, encompassing approximately 180,000 square miles, and extending from Big Sur, California north to Salem, Oregon, is closed to drift-gillnet fishing between August 15 and November 15 each year.  This seasonal closure overlaps with the presence of Pacific Leatherbacks, which migrate from their nesting beaches in New Guinea, Malaysia and Indonesia all the way across the Pacific to forage for jellyfish in the rich waters off the U.S. west coast in the late summer and fall.

Since the Pacific Leatherback Conservation Area was created, no Leatherbacks have been observed entangled or drowned by the fishery.  Now, the Bush administration seeks to undo this successful conservation measure and allow the drift-gillnet fleet to set their turtle-killing nets in the Conservation Area at the very time the Leatherbacks will be there.

The NMFS is currently accepting comments on this misguided proposal.  Please take a minute and send an email or write a letter to Dr. William Hogarth, Director of NMFS, urging him to deny the proposed permit to set gillnets in the Pacific Leatherback Conservation Area.