Menu
Home // Research grants // Our worldwide projects // Sustainable sea turtle fishery management

Sustainable sea turtle fishery management

Funding for this project has now finished

The problem

Green turtle by Isabelle Kuehn/Shutterstock.com

Sea turtles are under threat across our oceans. They become tangled in fishing nets and drown, their eggs are harvested for food and they can die as a consequence of eating plastic bags that they mistake for jelly fish. In the Caribbean we’ve been working with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) for several years, helping them ensure that small-scale fishing of local populations of sea turtles is done sustainably. With PTES funding, MCS collected valuable data that they presented to the local government as evidence of how to manage local fisheries sustainably. Happily, in 2014, in light of this evidence, the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) Government changed its fishery legislation to improve management of its traditional turtle fishery.

Now it’s time to revisit those fishermen who worked with the team to check whether they are following the guidance and complying with the regulations.

The solution

The team will work on the Turks and Caicos Islands with local communities to check that the fishermen are sticking to the rules. These include having an eight month closed season for hawksbill turtles when they are most likely to nest and only catching turtles that fall within a set size limit. This will mean that the population won’t suffer from taking too many animals of a particular size. The team will also monitor the turtles’ nests to check that sufficient animals are coming to the beaches and laying their eggs to maintain their numbers. We were delighted that the Turks and Caicos Government responded to our call to change the law in order to protect our sea turtles. Now we need to make sure that the local fishermen are managing their catches within the law in the hope that the future of local sea turtle populations is secure.

Latest news

Thank you to all our donors who helped us fund this work. You can help us support more projects like this with a donation today:

Let's keep in touch...

We'd love to tell you about our conservation work through our regular newsletter Wildlife World, and also how you can save endangered species through volunteering, taking action or donating. You must be 18 or over. The information that you provide will be held by People’s Trust for Endangered Species. For information on how PTES processes personal data, please see our privacy policy.

People's Trust for Endangered Species, 3 Cloisters House, 8 Battersea Park Road, London SW8 4BG

Registered Charity Number: 274206 • Site Design: Mike Leach Creative at Waters • Branding: Be Colourful

Copyright PTES 2024