TED Introduction makes Boat owners aggressive

Kochi: TED Introduction makes Boat owners aggressive. Kerala’s fishing boat’s owners have taken an aggressive regarding TED (Turtle Excluder Device) to be used on their boats to act according to the demand of U.S. one of the largest seafood export market of India, said all Kerala Fishing Boat Operator Association.

Turtle Excluder Device (TED) is a device fitted to a net or modification that allows turtles to escape immediately after capture in the net. TEDs were originally designed to exclude the capture of a turtle or other large animals in shrimp nets to lend protection to this endangered species from capture.

In explicit, ocean turtles are caught once bottom trawling is employed by the industrial shrimp fishing trade. to catch shrimp, a fine-meshed trawl is required. This ends up in massive amounts of alternative marine organisms being conjointly caught as a marine creature. once a turtle gets caught or entangled in a very trawl, it becomes treed and is unable to come back to the surface. Since ocean turtle’s area unit bodily function creatures with lungs, they eventually drown.
TED is mandatory in the US since 1987 and they highly promote the use of TED globally by visiting different seafood exporting countries. The US has banned the export of Indian Wild Prawns since July 2018 as the country hadn’t complied with the turtle conservation technique of using TEDs.

“We are open to the idea of using TEDs on trawl nets as it is a measure for environmental protection. However, we have two concerns – one regarding the need for such a system in Kerala and the other regarding the cost of implementing it,” said General Secretary of AKFBOA, Joseph Xavier Kalapurackal.
A two-member team from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the State Department of the US had visited the India coastal towns and their report on the potential use of TEDs within the country is due for publication in close to future.
Kalapurackal said “According to our understanding, 93% of the sea turtles are near Gahirmatha beach in Odisha and perhaps the rest is near Ratnagiri are in Maharashtra,” and added that his organization is quite concerned about the need for TEDs on Kerala coast.