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The findings summarise the status of sea turtles in Vanuatu, including turtle research, monitoring and knowledge management approaches, ni-Vanuatu cultural values, threats to sea turtles, and government and customary management systems.

For sharks living in the open ocean, longline fishing is the number-one threat, with an estimated 20 million pelagic sharks caught annually by fishers looking for tuna and other desired species.

An international team of researchers have developed a method to assess sustainable levels of human-caused wildlife mortality, which when applied to a trawl fishery shows that dolphin capture is not sustainable.

In 1987, a biologist went undercover on a commercial tuna fishing vessel. One video he took made headlines around the world: hundreds of dolphins encircled in purse seine nets, drowning in distress.

Six of the seven marine turtle species are categorised as Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Senior representatives from eight Government Departments met in Port Vila yesterday for the first meeting of the Pacific-European Union Marine Partnership (PEUMP) programme-funded By-catch and Integrated Ecosystem Management (BIEM) Initiative Steering Committee.

Authorities say the use of these illegal drift nets, dubbed “walls of death” due to their deadly impact on marine life, has surged.

New rules that apply to a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean aim to improve manta and devil rays’ chances of surviving encounters with tuna fishing boats.The measure prohibits fishers from targeting the rays or keeping the ones they catch accidentally.