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Twenty-Five Sea Turtles Return to Wild

Posted on: Monday, 24 September 2007, 21:00 CDT

By Phil Long, The Miami Herald

SEBASTIAN INLET STATE PARK -- Twenty-five loggerhead sea turtles are back in the wild thanks to volunteers who gathered Monday on the shores of the Indian River Lagoon to send the threatened turtles home from a three-year research project on fishhooks.

The research on the Broward-born turtles may lead to hook designs and other improvements that will save countless sea turtles in years to come.

Volunteers gently lifted large, plywood-and-fiberglass boxes from a rental truck and carried them quickly to the lagoon, where they flooded them with the brackish water, then tipped them forward to set free each of the roughly 100-pound, 3-year-old loggerheads.

Volunteer Claire Layton, 8 years old, got to help with more than one of the turtles, watching as they splashed out of the box and headed into the lagoon.

The third-grader said later that she was thinking "how cool it was to be able to be releasing them and that we got to have the opportunity to help."

In August 2004, researchers carefully picked up 200 loggerhead hatchlings as they emerged from their sandy nest in Pompano Beach and took them to Galveston, Texas, where 25 of them have been participating in research on fishhooks under the direction of the Southeast Fisheries Science Center.

Each year sea turtles drown when they swallow fishhooks used by long-line fishing crews. The lines, which can be several miles long, are set with evenly spaced hooks.

Ben Higgins, a federal Marine Fisheries researcher, is one of those working on finding the right size and shape of hooks and bait that will be too big for turtles to gobble down, but not too big to catch the target fish that crews are looking for. None of the hooks used during research had barbs, nor were the turtles hurt in any way by the experiments, Higgins said.

The idea is that when fishing where there are sea turtles that might be in jeopardy, "You must use a hook and bait combination that has been proven in the laboratory not to catch sea turtles," Higgins said. "It is simple. If the turtle can't swallow it, they can't get deep hooked."

Different combinations of hook designs and baits may work in one fishery to keep turtles off and still catch fish, but the same combination might not work as well in another part of the world with a different species of fish or turtle.

In an effort to protect endangered turtles, the government has had to close certain fishing areas.

Recently, research on hooks and bait allowed the reopening of a swordfish area off the Hawaiian islands, Higgins said.

"We definitely support this research," said Jennifer Wilmes, spokeswoman for the trade association National Fisheries Institute. The organization has supported other similar efforts, she said.

Gina Hollywood, director of a Melbourne Beach pre-school and a volunteer in the Sea Turtle Preservation Society, was there Monday to help lug the loggerheads to their freedom.

"I really love to see the turtles go back into the wild so that we can preserve them for the next generation," Hollywood said.

Source: The Miami Herald

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