” IF YOU COME ACROSS AN ENTANGLED TURTLE – DON’T CUT THE LINE!!!! CALL 112! ”
Every year, hundreds of yachtsmen and fishers worldwide come across turtles, seabirds or cetaceans entangled in ghost fishing gear, raffia bags or other dangerous marine litter artefacts adrift. The social media are full of videos of people cutting loose turtles thinking they are saving the animal. Unfortunately, they are making things worse.
When you cut loose a tourniquet, the poisoned blood of the necrosis enters the animal’s bloodstream and kills it. If a turtle has a flipper with lines tight as a tourniquet, the animal needs to be taken to a recovery centre where veterinarians can remove the lines to ensure the survival of the animal. In the Mediterranean the best option is to call 112 (or the local emergency number). There are recovery centres in all riparian countries that will assist you.
Check out this short video of the rescue of loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) “Amor”. This illustrates how a simple call by VHF or phone will result in an entire team of professionals and volunteers that will assist anyone who finds an entangled turtle. Patrol boats, port authorities, research institutions and rescue centres around the Mediterranean now work together for the recovery of marine turtles.
According to United Nations, every year over eight million tons of plastic litter enter the oceans. It is estimated that over 70% of this is abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG), also known as “ghost fishing”. Before sinking down the water column and ending up on the seafloor, ghost gear and marine litter in general can drift for years on the surface, aggregating in precisely the same oceanographic features (downwelling and fronts) where many species as turtles, elasmobranchs, cetaceans, etc. find an essential foraging habitat. Over the last decades, many regions as the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, have shifted from having concentrations of drifting hydrocarbons to masses of marine litter adrift.
But often where there is a problem, we can also find an opportunity, and that is the case of sea turtles getting entangled in ghost gear. In several of the identified hotspots of “ghost fishing” risk we also have a very density of navigation by yachts and/or fishing vessels. This is why in 2019 the Mediterranean Ghost Fishing Network (MGF) was created, to enhance concerted effort at a basin-wide scale. In 2025, the MGF is scaling up at the international level through LIFE OASIS, a project funded by the EC and the USFWS, as it constitutes an important contribution to the recovery of loggerhead turtles originating from nesting beaches around the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean.
Remember that apart from the actual rescue of an entangled turtle, you can also contribute to this project by reporting and retrieving ALDFG when you are out at sea. You can contact www.alnitak.org with information about ALDFG (ideally georeferenced images, or enter your observations in www,observadoresdelmar.org chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.observadoresdelmar.es/documents/resources/Guia%20de%20introduccion%20datos%20OdM%20_Proyecto%20Pesca%20Fantasma.pdf
On this site you can find and download protocols for sea turtle rescue and ALDFG reporting and retrieval. The ALDFG reporting is extremely useful to us, as this data allows us to conduct “backtrack modelling” to identify the source of the problem.
In past years, this method has allowed us to identify several illegal fishing grounds. Illegal, unreported and rudimentary fishing is often at the origin of ghost fishing. Help us fight this risk. ALDFG is not only a threat to marine wildlife, but also to the sustainability of fisheries and safety at sea.
