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US Bans Shrimp
From Costa Rica To Protect Sea Turtles
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US Bans Shrimp
From Costa Rica To Protect Sea Turtles
Pretoma
The US Department of State's Bureau of
Oceans, Environment, and Science imposed a
trade embargo on all Costa Rican shrimp
exports to the US, effective as of May 1.
The embargo is due to Costa Rica’s failure
to enforce its laws that require commercial
shrimp fishers to protect sea turtles from
capture and death in trawl nets by using
Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs).
According to a report issued by the State
Department, the decision to embargo Costa
Rica was the result of a multi-year
investigation that involved certification
visits and data compiled from credible
third-party sources. The evidence points out
how Costa Rica’s Fishery Institute (Incopesca),
didn’t “provide sanctions for TED violations
that served as an effective deterrent
against the failure to use TEDs”.
“Incopesca has been extremely negligent”,
denounced Andy Bystrom of Pretoma, a Costa
Rican NGO that has worked on TED issues
since 1997. “In meetings with the State
Department in December 2008, Incopesca was
warned that Costa Rica`s shrimp could be
embargoed, to which the officers responded
that they would resolve the problem in early
2009, but they haven’t done a thing”.
Costa Rica was the only country whose shrimp
was embargoed by the US.
The 15 nations that retain their hold on the
US shrimp market are: Belize, Colombia,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana,
Honduras, Madagascar, Mexico, Nicaragua,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Suriname, and
Venezuela.
“This is Costa Rica's 4th shrimp embargo
since 1999, which comes to prove that a long
term official policy has been to ignore
domestic TED regulations and allow the
needles massacre of thousands of sea
turtles, drowned by industrial shrimp
trawlers”, said Randall Arauz, President of
Pretoma. “Our concern now is the rest of the
Central American countries where shrimp
trawling occurs, as TED regulations are not
strictly enforced anywhere in the region”.
“Shrimp fishers non-compliance with TED laws
is a chronic problem occurring throughout
the world”, said Todd Steiner, executive
director of Turtle Island Restoration
Network, in Forest Knolls, CA.
TIRN is also in negotiations with the U. S.
government after submitting a 60-day notice
of intent to sue the US Department of State
for its failure to create a meaningful and
transparent process of evaluating nations to
ensure proper protection of sea turtles in
shrimp fishing under Public Law 101-162
section 609 of the U. S. Endangered Species
Act. This provision requires nations
exporting shrimp to the US to use comparable
technology to ensure sea turtles do not
drown in shrimp nets.
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