Gill Net Lawsuit by the Turtle

In an escalating war of lawsuits and legislation, North Carolina fishing interests on all sides are reacting with fierce urgency to an attempt to ban gill nets from state waters in order to protect endangered sea turtles.

On Monday the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Center of Topsail Island formally filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking the elimination of any gill net fishing in North Carolina that causes harm or death to sea turtles.

The lawsuit names the NC Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC), the NC Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) and DMF Director Dr. Louis Daniel as plaintiffs and says the state has violated the federal Endangered Species Act.

Beasley is being represented by the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic which operates under NC State Bar rules that allow law students to provide legal services to non-profit groups on environmental issues.

The lawsuit has been assigned to Judge Terrence W. Boyle in NC’s Eastern District Court.

The lawsuit filing follows a recent vote by the MFC not to voluntarily stop large mesh gill net fishing in the state. That vote likely doomed a compromise on the issue.

“I still think there’s a possibility of getting together and getting something done,” said Daniel regarding a compromise, “but now that’s just speculation on my part.”

Meanwhile US Congressman Walter Jones, a NC Republican who represents the 3rd District in the ‘Crystal Coast’ area, is introducing a bill in Washington that would delay any actions on sea turtle protections until further study.

Dean Phillips, the director of the Coastal Fisheries Reform Group (CFRG), an organization of NC recreational fishermen advocating the banning of gill nets, blasted Rep. Jones’ actions in a statement.

“Congressman Jones will be embarrassed when his colleagues find out that this bill was introduced in an effort to interfere with impending legal action that could affect his commercial fishing supporters who refuse to face up to the damage that gill nets are inflicting on all marine life here in NC,” said Phillips.

Representative Jones' office did not return phone calls asking for comment.

Matt Wirt of Reel Adventure Charters, a recreational guide who has been fishing the waters around Wilmington for 25 years, says the attack on gill nets has been a long time coming.

“I hate what’s going to happen to these commercial fishermen,” said Wirt, “but you have to follow the law. They don’t seem to believe that.”

Wirt says gill nets are an indiscriminate way of harvesting fish, often catching non-target species and other animals in what is known as ‘bycatch’.

“It’s a waste issue,” Wirt said. “I’ve seen 14 gill nets set in an area a half mile wide before. The large mesh gill nets do a lot of damage to the red drum, the birds, turtles, anything that gets caught up in them.”

But Wirt says gill net fishing in his area is far less destructive since a regional 24-hour mandatory net attendance rule was put in place a few years ago.

“Making the commercial fishermen attend the gill nets really put an end to a lot of the bycatch and interaction problems where I fish,” Wirt said. “That went away. But I know that’s not the law in most of the state. I’m not really in favor of banning all the gill nets if they’d just have to attend them all the time.”

Wirt says unattended gill nets cause a lot of waste.

“The nets were set and you’d see them high and dry the next day filled with spoiled fish,” Wirt said. “Maybe if they’d make attendance mandatory all over the state then turtle problem wouldn’t be so bad.”

Because he is named in the lawsuit, Daniel declined to discuss it in particular. He did say one of the problems North Carolina has had regarding sea turtles and net interactions is a lack of strong data to figure out how severely gill nets affect the turtle population.

“One of the big issues is we just don’t have a lot of hard data on the turtle populations,” Daniel said. “The turtle data is not as sound as our fisheries data.”

Daniel said that it is hard for the state to figure out what is going on with turtles since the population ranges from Cape Cod down to Brazil.

“It’s very difficult to access what is happening outside the country,” Daniel said. “How do we as North Carolina do that? And much of the information I’ve seen is based on turtle nesting, but we know not every turtle nests every year. Improving the data collections program would help.”

Daniel and the DMF went to the MFC recently and proposed a temporary ban on large mesh gill nets between dates in May and December. But at a meeting packed with commercial fishing employees, the MFC voted only to restrict gill nets to 4 days a week.

Many speakers said that the socio-economic impact of banning gill nets would be devastating to local coastal economies, leading to the MFC’s attempted compromise. But Daniel said at the time he believed the 4-day regulations would be unacceptable to both the federal government and the Sea Turtle Center.

Daniel said he has seen a draft of Rep. Jones’ bill, which includes proposals for aerial studies of sea turtles.

“I don’t know if aerial surveys are the technology we need or not,” Daniel said. “As a fisheries department it is hard to access sea turtle mortality. I understand that there are areas in South America where sea turtles are still harvested and eaten. When you start throwing in other countries with different rules, how do we access what is going on?”

“I don’t think even the people in the turtle world think we have all the information we need,” Daniel said.

Daniel understands commercial fishermen are angry but says he thinks most of the anger is directed at the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Sea Turtle Center.

“In the public meeting very few comments were directed at the state. Folks recognize that this is a legal matter and a federal matter,” Daniel said.

Phillips said that his recreational group fully backed the sea turtle lawsuit.

“The CFRG applauds this move in response to the years of political posturing and neglect of our marine resources for the benefit of the few commercial fishing interests here in NC at the expense of all North Carolinians,” Phillips said.

Wirt said that state commercial fishermen should have anticipated this move for a long time and taken steps to curb gill net abuses sooner.

“You can’t just bend the law to appease our wants,” Wirt said. “Sooner or later you have to follow the law.”

Daniel would not get into his thoughts about the chances of the lawsuit being successful and gill nets being eliminated in North Carolina, but he indicated it was a very serious situation for fishermen.

“The Endangered Species Act is a powerful piece of legislation,” Daniel said

I hate to wish somebody to lose their lively hood. But I am all for the ban on gill nets.