Marc De Ver­teuil

Trinidad's leatherback pop­u­la­tion is in a con­tin­u­ous and rapid de­cline. The prob­a­ble cause: gill nets. Thou­sands of re­turn­ing leatherback fe­males be­come en­tan­gled in gill­nets in Trinidad's wa­ters. Some drown due to en­tan­gle­ment, oth­ers meet a more grue­some fate: they are beat­en to death. Shock­ing, isn't it?Gill nets are used by the ar­ti­sanal fish­ing in­dus­try–our lo­cal pirogue fish­ing fleet. The nets hang sus­pend­ed in the wa­ter, catch­ing un­sus­pect­ing fish.

But not just fish. Tur­tles don't see the nets, and get stuck in them. Tur­tles have lungs. Like us they need to be at the sur­face to breathe. No­body knows for sure how many tur­tles drown in nets. Of­fi­cial es­ti­mates range from 1,000-3,000, but it could be more. One fish­er­man told me 18 got caught in his net one night. All drowned. That's one net, in one night.

Not all en­tan­gled tur­tles drown. Some­times the fish­er­men get to them in time, and free them. Free­ing a leatherback is tricky. An av­er­age-size leatherback weighs about 800 pounds. They have in­cred­i­bly pow­er­ful flip­pers, and have been record­ed div­ing down to 4,200 feet. A fish­er­man has to be care­ful not to get caught in a net to­geth­er with a leatherback, while try­ing to free it. He could end up drowned at the bot­tom of the sea.

Rather than un­tan­gle a tur­tle, it's eas­i­er and safer to cut the tur­tle free with a knife. There's a cost at­tached to cut­ting the net: the re­place­ment ma­te­r­i­al, labour and lost op­por­tu­ni­ty. No­body com­pen­sates the fish­er­man for this. Each en­tan­gle­ment can cost hun­dreds of dol­lars. Most fish­er­men bare­ly make ends meet. The choice be­tween sav­ing a tur­tle and feed­ing the fam­i­ly is eas­i­ly made; the tur­tle is beat­en to death. When dead, the tur­tle is safe­ly un­tan­gled from the net.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers