Locals in Kumejima island discovered carcasses of more than 30 sea turtles, scattered around a remote beach last Thursday.
Authorities said that the animals were found grievously injured with stab wounds around their neck when the tide went out about 50 meters offshore, and the sea bottom became visible in the Maja area on the east side of the island in the early afternoon of July 14. The Independent reported some of the sea turtles were barely able to move and were bleeding, but many of which appeared dead.
Sea turtles are classified as "Endangered" according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, due to persistent over-exploitation, fatal fisheries interactions, and the widespread collection of their eggs. The recent report of deaths on the remote island in Japan confirms the stab wounds were caused by a blade, as reported by Japan's national daily The Mainichi.
Cases of Animal Cruelty
The Okinawa Prefectural Police's Naha Police Station dispatched local police to investigate the situation, and found that a fishing operator in Okinawa Prefecture admitted to stabbing sea turtles to remove them from fishing nets in an attempt to disentangle them.
"A lot of them were tangled up in fishing nets. I disentangled some of them and released them into the sea, but I couldn't free heavy ones, so I stabbed them to get rid of them," according to the fishery operator.
Yoshi Tsukakoshi, a spokesperson at Sea Turtle Museum of Kumejima, told CNN that the nets were laid by fishermen to catch fish but some of them think that "turtles eat all the seagrass before it grows and that prevents the fish from spawning in the area".
"As a sea turtle community which has been transmitting the conservation of the marine environment and the importance of living creatures through sea turtle conservation activities since day-to-day, this time's situation is extremely painful and disappointing," the sea turtle museum said on its Facebook page. "We are so sorry for causing you all the trouble".
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Biodiversity Loss: One of the World's Most Pressing Crises
The Sea Turtle Museum of Kumejima is renowned for its sea turtles. The animals thrive in seagrass-covered habitat and eat them before they can grow.
The IUCN "Red List" has been drawing attention to the conservation needs of sea turtle populations around the world by characterizing sea turtles as endangered. Their general aim is to convey the urgency and scale of conservation problems that our plant and animal species are experiencing, before it is too late.
To reverse the trend toward extinction, organized data and comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status needs to be accessed by policy makers and the public, to encourage everyone to reduce causal threats. Which is why the recent event at the Kumejima island beach was rather alarming to the sea turtle community.
"I have never seen anything like this before," one of the museum employees said, referring to many turtles which appeared dead. "It is extremely difficult to process this."
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