The Human Relationship To Other Species

In my recent post The Argument From Ignorance, speaking of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, I wrote the following—

Kolbert is too polite to say it, but the book is not "a call to action" because there are no collective actions that would fix the mass extinction problem. Humans would have to be something other than they are. And if we were a different species, there probably wouldn't be any need for a "call to action" because we wouldn't be detroying ourselves and large parts of the biosphere. That's the essence of determinism. Humans are a species, so what you see is what you get.

I want to illustrate these points today. This story is about Atlantic leatherback turtles, and serves as a microcosm of the human relationship to other species. Here's the abstract of a recent paper with the unwieldy title Pan-Atlantic analysis of the overlap of a highly migratory species, the leatherback turtle, with pelagic longline fisheries (Proceedings of the Royal Society, February 12, 2014).

Large oceanic migrants play important roles in ecosystems, yet many species are of conservation concern as a result of anthropogenic threats, of which incidental capture by fisheries is frequently identified. The last large populations of the leatherback turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, occur in the Atlantic Ocean, but interactions with industrial fisheries could jeopardize recent positive population trends, making bycatch mitigation a priority.

Here, we perform the first pan-Atlantic analysis of spatio-temporal distribution of the leatherback turtle and ascertain overlap with longline fishing effort. Data suggest that the Atlantic probably consists of two regional management units: northern and southern (the latter including turtles breeding in South Africa). Although turtles and fisheries show highly diverse distributions, we highlight nine areas of high susceptibility to potential bycatch (four in the northern Atlantic and five in the southern/equatorial Atlantic) that are worthy of further targeted investigation and mitigation [graph left, click to enlarge].

These are reinforced by reports of leatherback bycatch at eight of these sites. International collaborative efforts are needed, especially from nations hosting regions where susceptibility to bycatch is likely to be high within their exclusive economic zone (northern Atlantic: Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal, Spain, USA and Western Sahara; southern Atlantic: Angola, Brazil, Namibia and UK) and from nations fishing in these high-susceptibility areas, including those located in international waters.

And in plain language for the layman—

Researchers used data from satellite transmitters attached to the turtles to track their movements across the Atlantic Ocean. These movements were then overlapped with information on high pressure fishing areas to identify where the turtles are most susceptible to becoming entangled and where they may drown...

The international study, jointly led by Dr Matthew Witt of the University of Exeter and Dr Sabrina Fossette of Swansea University, found that urgent international efforts are needed to protect the iconic species.

Between 1995 and 2010, a total of 106 leatherback turtles were satellite-tracked in the Atlantic and south-west Indian Oceans. Resulting information was interpreted along with knowledge on longline fishing effort and nine areas with the highest risk of bycatch were identified.

Maps of the turtles' daily locations revealed that Atlantic leatherbacks use both deep sea international waters (more than 200 nautical miles from land) and coastal national waters, either seasonally or year-round, in a complex pattern of habitat use.

More than four billion hooks were set throughout the entire Atlantic Ocean by industrial fisheries between 1995 and 2010 — equivalent to 730,000 hooks per day.

Dr Witt, of the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, said: "This study clearly stresses the transboundary nature of leatherback turtle seasonal movement and the multi-national effort necessary to design measures to protect this iconic species from fisheries activity.

Significant efforts are urgently needed to bridge the gap between scientists and the fishing industry to ensure these and future findings are rapidly progressed into policy."

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that of the nine areas of high susceptibility for leatherbacks, four are in the North Atlantic and five in the South/Equatorial Atlantic...

Let's summarize what we know about these animals, with some additional information. You can also visit seaturtle.org.

• Status
  ESA Endangered - throughout its range
  CITES Appendix I - throughout its range (threatened with extinction)
  

  Kingdom: Animalia
  Phylum: Chordata
  Class: Reptilia
  Order: Testudines
  Family: Dermochelyidae
  Genus: Dermochelys
  Species: coriacea

• CITES: listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, which prohibits international trade
• CMS: listed in Appendices I and II of the Convention on Migratory Species and are protected under the following auspices of CMS:
• Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation and Management of Marine Turtles and their Habitats of the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia (IOSEA)
• Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Conservation Measures for Marine Turtles of the Atlantic Coast of Africa
• SPAW: protected under Annex II of the Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife Protocol of the Cartagena Convention
• IAC: The U.S. is a party of the Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles, which is the only international treaty dedicated exclusively to marine turtles

We see that the endangered Atlantic leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) has been afforded all sorts of protection by conscious human agencies who have taken on the burden of noticing and preserving the existence of these turtles.

Nevertheless—

• More than four billion hooks were set throughout the entire Atlantic Ocean by industrial fisheries between 1995 and 2010 — equivalent to 730,000 hooks per day. Leatherbacks get tangled up in these lines and drown.

• Fishermen are not targeting the turtles. Drowned turtles are thus referred to as bycatch.

• The authors of the paper cited above identified areas of high susceptibility to potential bycatch in the Atlantic Ocean (map above). They did so by tagging 106 turtles and tracking their movements with satellites. In short, a few humans are using technology to try to inform policy which might encourage large behavioral shifts to save these turtles, shifts which they themselves can not effect.

• It is no longer possible to simply leave the turtles alone because of those four billion hooks set between 1995 and 2010, and the many hundreds of millions of hooks set since then. Thus these leatherback turtles will live or die depending on human actions.

• The authors state that significant efforts are urgently needed to bridge the gap between scientists and the fishing industry to ensure these and future findings are rapidly progressed into policy. If these findings are not rapidly progressed into policy, or, miraculously, rapidly progressed into policy and that policy is not enforced, Atlantic leatherback turtles will surely go extinct within the next century.

• In this and in many, many other cases just like it, the fate of the Atlantic leatherback (healthy populations or eventual extinction) is a function of the relative strength—the power to implement and enforce policy actions—of ubiquitous and very large commercial interests on the one hand, and very small uninfluential conservationist interests on the other.

• Finally, we can assert with great confidence that the vast majority of the 7,214,150,000 humans (est.) on Earth today (>>99.9%) don't give a shit about the fate of the Atlantic leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea).

And there it is. The Sixth Extinction is an inevitable consequence of humans being humans.

You might want to watch this interview with Elizabeth Kolbert on this subject.

Comments

[Oliver]

Four billion hooks! 730,000 hooks a day! Atlantic leatherbacks are merely bycatch! Is there no limit to human crass stupidity?

Rhetorical question, of course.

Doughty old James 'Gaia' Lovelock echoes a certain Dave Cohen in today's Guardian:

...delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. "I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything."

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange