More than 400 marine scientists want the United Nations (U.N.) to arrange a moratorium on fishing techniques accused of driving the Pacific leatherback turtle to near-extinction. A petition unveiled at last week's American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science) annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, calls on the U.N. to work with its members to impose a temporary Pacific Ocean ban on gillnets and longlines bearing thousands of hooks. Researchers say the two techniques have helped shrink leatherback breeding stocks by 95% since 1980.
Surveys suggest that there are only 5000 nesting female leatherbacks left in the Pacific. "There are just too many hooks adrift to give the leatherback a fighting chance," says Todd Steiner of the nonprofit Turtle Island Restoration Network, noting that longliners set up to 2 billion hooks per year.
The researchers point to U.N. efforts to achieve a global ban on high-seas drift netting in the 1990s as evidence of the organization's clout. A response to the petition could come as early as next week, when delegates to the U.N.'s fisheries body meet in Rome, Italy.
