Pictures: Millions of Sea Turtles Killed Accidentally

[n2doc]

Photograph courtesy Projeto Tamar Brazil, Image Bank

Entangled and drowned in a fishing net off the coast of Brazil, these green sea turtles in an undated picture are just a few of the millions of sea turtles that have been unintentionally killed by fishing operations over the past 20 years, according to a study released today by the journal Conservation Letters.

"Of all the threats sea turtles face right now, bycatch is the most serious," said Bryan Wallace, a marine biologist with Conservation International and lead author of the study. (Read a commentary by Wallace on how he thinks changing your eating habits can help sea turtles.)

The study pulls together data from around the world on sea turtle deaths from nets, hooks, and trawlsóand questions the estimates of previous reports.

"Because the reports we reviewed typically covered less than one percent of all fleets, with little or no information from small-scale fisheries around the world, we conservatively estimate that the true total is probably not in tens of thousands, but in the millions of turtles taken as bycatch in the past two decades," the authors write.



more

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/photogalleries/100406-sea-turtles-killed-conservation-letters-pictures/

[sharesunited]

1. Heartbreaking. Gentle, noble souls.

[amborin]

2. " killed accidentally" "over the past 20 yrs" oxymoron? never changed their fishing practices

ghaslty and inhumane

humans are such barbaric killers

[stuntcat]

3. Victory!!

big V for Humans vs. Earth

[Nihil]

4. Shit.

I come back after nearly two weeks off and what do I find?

The usual pointless, ad-hom rich bickering over nuclear power,
dozens of copies of the Jacobsen paste buffer, "skepticism" over AGW,
the tacet support of coal (clean or otherwise), loads of wank on both
sides of the pro-wind/anti-wind popularity contest, excavated articles
from 3-22 years ago to blather on about "proliferation" and yet more
evidence that Obama is just another corporatist in (thin) disguise.

None of this disgusts me (or, to be honest, surprises me) but then I get
to that photo in the OP and I just want to cry.