In October 2000, following a previous successful suit by the Center and Turtle Island, the Fisheries Service issued a “biological opinion” that the fishery is jeopardizing the endangered loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles with extinction. The opinion requires the closure of certain portions of the fishery north of Point Conception for the leatherback sea turtle. In El Nino years, it requires closure of the fishery south of Point Conception for the loggerhead sea turtle. The agency belatedly implemented the leatherback closure after the Center and Turtle Island threatened to sue, but it continues to stall on the loggerhead protections.

Loggerhead sea turtles off the California coast are thought to nest in Japan. They are declining rapidly, largely due to entanglement in longline and driftnet fishing gear. In El Nino years, unusually warm water off southern California brings loggerheads into the range of the California drift gillnet fishery where they are caught and drowned in large numbers.

The California drift gillnet fishery targets swordfish but also kills dozens of other marine species. Each year over ten thousand each of blue sharks and mola or sunfish are unintentionally killed and discarded by the fishery. Dozens of dolphins of various species are also killed each year, and virtually every year one or more grey whales, fin whales, minke whales, sperm whales, or orcas are entangled and drowned. Drift gillnets have been banned in the high seas by the UN, on the Atlantic coast, and by the state of Washington. Inexplicably California continues to let these curtains of death be deployed in the waters offshore each fall and winter. The Center and Turtle Island are committed to seeing drift gillnets banned from all US waters.

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