Turtle Excluder Device (TED)

A turtle excluder device is a grid of bars fitted in a trawl net that lets a sea turtle (or other large animal) escape through a flap while shrimp and fish pass through to the codend. Required in US shrimp trawls since the early 1990s and a condition of US shrimp-import rules, properly used TEDs cut turtle capture by about 97 percent. They are a leading example of bycatch-reduction gear modification.