U.S. Blocks Costa Rica Shrimp Exports over Threat to Sea Turtles
Costa Rica has been added to the list of countries prohibited from exporting wild-harvested shrimp to the U.S. market because shrimpers' practices pose a threat to sea turtles, a U.S. State Department official says.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said May 3 that a U.S. team would revisit Costa Rica later in 2005 to determine whether the country's program has improved enough to allow the resumption of shrimp exports to the United States.

Under a 1990 U.S. law, the State Department has certified 13 countries, most of them around the Caribbean, to export wild-harvested shrimp to the U.S. market if their commercial shrimp boats employ turtle-excluder devices to prevent turtles of threatened species from being captured and drowning. This same condition is imposed on U.S. shrimp boats.

Those 13 countries are Belize, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Suriname and Venezuela.

The department also has certified countries where shrimpers' operations pose no threat to turtles. In some of those countries the shrimpers set fishing nets manually rather than mechanically or use other fishing methods not harmful to turtles. In this group are: Bahamas, China, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Oman, Peru and Sri Lanka.

In the other certified countries, the shrimp boats operate only in cold waters where the risk of taking turtles is negligible; those countries are Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom and Uruguay.

In addition to Costa Rica, some other countries lacking State Department certification that could otherwise export wild-harvested shrimp to the United States are Bangladesh, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Trinidad and Tobago. Some had certification requests rejected, and others never sought certification.