Turtle Excluder Devices (Teds) experience in the Adriatic sea

This presentation showed the results of test with TED carried out in the Adriatic Sea. Four types of TEDs were tested with the aim of finding the best solution in order to minimize the losses of target species meanwhile providing benefits to fishermen. All TEDs were placed in a predetermined position of the trawl nets so as to allow captured sea turtles to escape. The best results were obtained with super-shooter TED. TEDs seemed to reduce the amount of discard in the codend catch leading to an improvement of fish quality and to a reduction of the sorting time. However, there might be a risk in increasing the losses of large commercial flat species. No evident increase in drag or chain polish or twisting of the codend was detected in the net fitted with the TEDs. Some preliminary results on tests carried out with a super-shooter TED mounted on a pelagic trawl net were also showed. Promising results were obtained with the exclusion of debris