Section 1. Sea Turtles
All sea turtles are protected internationally, as these long-lived animals face a number of environmental challenges (breeding ground destruction, boat collisions, ingestion of marine debris, disease linked to ocean pollution), including interactions with fishers.
The most common names of sea turtles are used in the following section, although they can be named differently depending on the ocean.
There are seven species of sea turtles. The loggerhead (Caretta caretta), the green turtle (Chelonia mydas), the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata), the olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea), and the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) are distributed in temperate and tropical waters of all oceans.
The less common Kemp's ridley (Lepdochelys kempi) and the flatback (Natator depressus) have a restricted distribution to northwest Atlantic and shallow coastal waters of Australia, respectively. However, the following five species are commonly encountered during tuna fishing, and Kemp’s ridley is more occasionally found as bycatch in longline fisheries of the Atlantic Ocean.