Lawsuit seeks more protection of sea turtles

Posted in the San Francisco Chronicle: The U.S. government is failing to adequately protect the world's oldest and most imperiled sea turtles, leaving them vulnerable to capture and injury off the California and Oregon coasts, according to a lawsuit filed by three environmental groups in a San Francisco federal court Thursday.

New protections for the turtles, including as few as 3,000 nesting females remaining in the world, would result in stricter controls on gillnet and longline fishing, oil drilling and wave-energy projects, the groups argue.

The western Pacific leatherbacks travel 6,000 miles from Indonesia to forage for food off the Golden Gate, and the North Pacific loggerheads come from the Japanese archipelago to feed from Alaska to Baja.

At the same time, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Center for Biological Diversity and Oceana, the groups that filed the suit in U.S. District Court, are asking the federal government to deny a permit to begin the first hooked-longline fishing for swordfish in California waters, which they say snags turtles. Currently, West Coast commercial fishermen may use only harpoons or drift gillnets to catch swordfish, and longline gear is prohibited along the California coast and out 200 miles.