URGENT: Help Baja's Loggerhead Sea Turtles

There's a solution to this problem, and YOU can help Mexico bring it about.

Thank you to the international network of scientists, fishers, politicians, organizations, agencies, and concerned individuals who have taken up this important cause over the past 15 years. Your efforts are working!

1. Please sign Yuki's petiton asking Mexico's Presedient to support responsible fishermen.

2. Please sign Defenders of Wildlife's petition asking President Pena Nieto to help protect loggerheads and support fishermen as they transition off of the deadly fishing gear.

3. Please sign Turtle Island's online petition (en espanol) asking President Pena Nieto's cabinet to help protect loggerhead turtles in Baja.

4. And please share these link with everyone you know around the world. The pressure is working!

With this campaign you can help save thousands of endangered sea turtles each year AND support the fishermen working hard to change their industry.

We won't give up until it's done.

For the past twenty years fishermen and scientists have worked together to study and protect the loggerhead sea turtles in Mexico that make an epic migration from their beaches in Japan, 7,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to feed along the Baja Peninsula.But the turtles meet a terible fate off the coast of Lopez Mateos, Mexico drowning in gillnets by the thousands.

"In its January 2013 Report to Congress, NMFS identified only one nation, Mexico, for fishing activities involving the bycatch of protected living marine resources (PLMR), such as marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds. Specifically sea turtles [loggerhead sea turtles] reportedly taken as bycatch in a bottom-set gillnet fishery off the Pacific coast of Baja California in 2012 .

After learning of the stranding event, NMFS contacted the Government of Mexico to request more information on the event and on Mexico's regulatory program in the gillnet fishery to reduce sea turtle bycatch. From the information NMFS received, the agency determined that the regulations Mexico provided were not comparable to U.S. regulations for bycatch of loggerheads.

Therefore, Mexico was identified for PLMR bycatch. If Mexico takes appropriate actions to address its activities within two years of being identified, then it receives a positive certification.

If Mexico receives a negative certification, sanctions under the Moratorium Protection Act may be applied, including prohibitions on importation of certain fish and fish products into the United States, denial of port privileges, and other measures, under specified circumstances."

• Spiraling loggerhead deaths linked to fishing gear off Baja California

• December 13, 2013 Letter from US Congressmen and women to US Secretary of Commerce and NOAA Administrator

• Open Letter to Mexico's President on World Oceans Day

• U.S. Trade Sanctions Sought Against Mexico
• Tour Operators Petition Mexican Government to Protect Sea Turtles, End Mass Mortality of Loggerheads in Baja
• NY Times: Can Technology and Tourism Sustain Mexico’s Sea Turtles?
• CONAPESCA invents toxic algae story to "explain" 2 decades of mass sea turtle mortality in Baja (in Spanish)
• Conapesca sin evidencia que relacione mortandad de caguama con sector pesquero
• NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE SOUTHWEST REGIONAL OFFICE UPDATE ON LEGAL AND REGULATORY ACTIVITIES
• NY Times: Postcard from a Loggerhead Turtle Dying Ground
• Huffington Post: Small-scale Fisheries Have Big Impacts on Sea Turtles
• Pulitzer Center: Fishermen Harm Loggerhead Turtles
• Endangered Species Reserach: High mortality of loggerhead turtles due to bycatch, human consumption and strandings at Baja California Sur, Mexico
• 60 mil personas han solicitado a Pena Nieto detener la muerte de Tortugas en BCS
• Reforma: De tortugas y embargos (Agencia Reforma / Julia Carabias)
• EcoAmericas: Turtle deaths raise concern in U.S., Mexico
• Bycatch and directed harvest drive high green turtle mortality at Baja California Sur, Mexico