Brits’ appetite for prawns could be driving the deaths of thousands of marine turtles a year, a shocking new report has warned.
The report, produced by the French Guiana Fisheries Committee, estimates that as many as 29,000 marine turtles – including species such as green, loggerhead and the endangered hawksbill - are killed every year by tropical prawn trawls that export to the European Union.
Just under half (46%) of the prawns imported into the UK, which is the EU’s largest individual market for the seafood, are wild-caught, and 85% of those are caught by trawlers operating in the tropical waters around Bangladesh, India and Vietnam, the report estimates.
Its findings have prompted the WWF to call for the UK government to introduce a requirement for all tropical prawn fisheries importing into the UK to use Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) – simple escape panels added to the body of fishing nets that can reduce turtle deaths by up to 97%.
The US has already banned tropical prawn imports where TEDs are not used, and fisheries in countries including Costa Rica, Mexico and Nigeria use them, with little impact on prawn harvests.
“People in the UK will be shocked to hear that eating one of their favourite types of seafood might be contributing to the needless deaths of threatened turtles,” said Dr Lyndsey Dodds, head of marine policy at WWF.
“The UK is importing a huge volume of tropical prawns into the country and the fisheries in countries such as India, Thailand and Madagascar who export to the UK market have had little incentive to move away from poor practice. TEDs are a win-win solution: they save the lives of thousands of turtles and are a more effective method for the fisheries.”
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