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A frustrated fisherman has claimed that he stabbed to death, dozens of protected turtles on a southern Japanese island after they were trapped in their fish webs, local officials said.Between 30 to 50 green turtles were found dead or dying last Thursday, with stab wounds on their necks and in other places, on the beach on Kumejima Island remote, around 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
That is a “very terrible sight”, according to Yoshimitsu Tsukakoshi, a senior staff member in Kumejima Umigame-Kan, a local turtle conservation agency.
Turtles are gentle creatures and they moved when humans approached them,” Tsukakoshi told AFP on Tuesday. “I don’t believe that it can happen today.”
Yuji Tabata, head of the local fisherman cooperative, told AFP that the man in charge of claiming to be stabbing animals after dozens became tangled in his gillnet.
The fisherman, whose name has not been released, told the cooperative that he released a lot of turtles, but after struggling with the animals, he began to stab them to try and weaken them.
He said he had never seen so many turtles in his nets. He regretted now,” Tabata said. “He said he felt in physical danger.”
The local city government and the police are investigating deaths, a city official told AFP, refusing to say whether the fisherman could face a sentence of the incident.
An editorial in the local newspaper Okinawa Times on Tuesday condemned the death and the way in which protected animals were left to perish on the beach.
It also urges local officials to consider claims by fishermen that turtles cause economic damage.Local reports say some fishermen in the area believe that the population of turtles has increased.The creatures can collide with fishing boats, hurt themselves and damage the propellers.
Tabata said the community was also worried that the turtles were eating seagrass which was home to the fish they rely on for their livelihoods.
He stressed that the incident was rare and fishermen regularly unravel the turtles trapped in their lines.We are in the process of producing ideas so this does not happen again,” he added.
