Over 18,000 illegal fishing nets in the deep sea of the Bay of Bengal have become a death trap for sea turtles as around 5,000 mother turtles have died in last one year because of these illegal nets.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Nazrul Islam Sumon, officer for Community-based Adaptation to Ecologically Critical Areas project under the Department of Environment (DoE), made the comment.
He also expressed concerns: “Breeding areas of turtles will be destroyed soon if the authorities concerned do not take actions in this regard.”
November-March is the breeding season for sea turtles. Mother turtles lay hundreds of eggs in the beach ranging from Sonadia Island to St Martin’s Island during the season. Later the baby turtles hatched out into the sea.
Sources said some unscrupulous groups had long been poaching sea turtles and selling it to different markets, adding that some locals had been involved in this illegal business for many years.
St Martin’s Island Union Parishad Chairman Nurul Amin told the Dhaka Tribune: “Turtles are laying eggs since November. But I have not seen any turtle dead this year yet.”
Specialists expressed concern that breeding could be hampered because of the increasing number of tourists in turtle breeding areas – Sonadia Island and St Martin Island.
They said mother turtles would not come to the coast to lay eggs because of sound pollution and usage of generators in the area. Sarder Shariful Islam, assistant director of Cox’s Bazar DoE, said: “St Martin Island and Shahporir Island are restricted areas. We have imposed some bans to maintain a balance in the environment. Coastguards and the naval force have been assisting in this regard. We also deployed guards to stop stealing turtle eggs.”
He also said death rate of turtle had reduced a lot because of growing awareness among the local fishermen.
Local fishermen said they used to kill turtles if any turtle got entangled into a net, but they started to release the turtles into the sea after carefully removing them from the net.
Turtle specialist Jahirul Islam said there were around five species of sea turtles. Among those, Green Turtle, Hawksbill Sea Turtle and Olive Ridley turtles usually come to the Bangladeshi coast to lay eggs, he added.
The authorities concerned had taken many initiatives to increase awareness among the locals to stop killing turtles since last two and a half year.