May 8, 2012 – NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The federal fisheries agency says that by the start of next year's shrimp season, all trawls should be required to include trap-doors for endangered and threatened sea turtles.
"Turtle excluder devices" are required on many trawls. But smaller boats are allowed to haul up some kinds of nets every hour or so to ensure that turtles don't drown, rather than installing the trapdoors.
The proposal comes after two years in which more than 1,100 dead sea turtles were found in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama waters – 644 in 2010, 525 in 2011. Many of those that hadn't decomposed too badly to dissect had drowned near the bottom, probably in shrimp nets, officials said.
The proposed rule will affect about 2,400 boats in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and North Carolina, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service proposal. It was scheduled for publication Thursday in the Federal Register, but a pre-publication copy was on the Federal Register's website Tuesday.
Boats in Florida also use skimmer trawls, pusher-head trawls and wing nets, which also are called butterfly trawls, but Florida already requires them to use turtle excluder devices, commonly known as TEDs, the proposal said.
Read the full story from the AP at the Anchorage Daily News.