Comment from Robert Redmon

I strongly oppose raising the limits of the number of sea turtles allowed to be caught in the Hawaii-based shallow-set longline swordfish fishery. Every death or injury of a sea turtle in this fishery has serious consequences for their future survival. Allowing more sea turtles to be killed or injured in the swordfish longline fishery means jeopardy for the species. Even holding the line on the existing fishery as proposed in "Alternative 1A" is unlikely to be protective enough. All other alternatives proposed in the regulation (1B to 1F) are completely unacceptable. The expansion of the Hawaii-based longline fishery would: • Violate the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because the ESA requires NMFS to ensure that sea turtle populations not only continue to survive, but recover; • Violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act because the Hawaii pelagic longline fishery is known to injure and kill humpback whales and false killer whales, but NMFS has yet to take the required steps to reduce fishery-related harm to these species; • Violate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MTBA) because the existing Hawai'i-based longline fishery kills migratory birds that are protected under the MBTA and an expanded fishery will kill more; and • Violate the the Magnuson-Stevens Act because this federal law requires fishery managers to end overfishing immediately and rebuild overfished populations of bigeye and yellowfin tuna, not increase catch levels of these species in the Hawaii longline fishery. Please count this comment as one individual. Thank your for seriously considering my views.