Action timeline

1999 – A court decision shut down the Hawaii-based longline fishery for swordfish. This decision to close millions of miles of the Pacific Ocean to longline fishing prompted the fleet of three dozen vessels to relocate to southern California.

2000 – The Center and the Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a lawsuit to keep the National Marine Fisheries Service from authorizing a California drift-gillnet fishery until it met requirements to reduce the number of loggerheads drowning in gillnets. Following this lawsuit, the agency agreed to prohibit drift-gillnets in Southern California in El Niño years when loggerheads are present.

January 10, 2002 – The Center and Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a petition for an emergency rule to list the northern and Florida Panhandle subpopulations of the loggerhead sea turtle as endangered species throughout their range.

June 2002 – The Center filed a successful lawsuit to stop an experimental longline swordfish fishery that would have killed 87 loggerhead sea turtles in the same area where the fishing practice was previously banned in Hawaii.

December 2002 – The Center filed a lawsuit against the Fisheries Service for its failure to close portions of the California drift-gillnet fishery during an El Niño year when warmer water temperatures brought loggerheads into contact with the fishery.

2004 – Following a successful lawsuit by the Center and the Turtle Island Restoration Network, longline fishing for swordfish was prohibited along the West Coast.

2006 – The Center fought off a proposal to reopen areas off the California coast to drift-gillnet fishing.

June 2007 – When pressed by the Center, the Fisheries Service denied a permit that would have allowed drift-gillnet vessels to operate in a protected area off the California and Oregon coasts.

July 2007 – The Center blocked a proposal by the Fisheries Service to allow longline fishing for swordfish off the California coast. In the same month, the Center and the Turtle Island Restoration Network filed a citizen petition to list the North Pacific loggerhead sea turtle under the Endangered Species Act and to have critical habitat designated along the coasts of Hawaii and California.

November 15, 2007 – The Center and Oceana petitioned to designate the western North Atlantic subpopulations of the loggerhead as a "distinct population segment" and to reclassify the populations as endangered.