result, information on the capture of sea turtles in other 

 fishing gear and other fisheries is scanty and has not been 

 systematically collected, in general. 



Below, I summarize information regarding the different types 

 of gear in which sea turtles are incidentally captured in the 

 U.S. This summary is based principally upon a report prepared by 

 the Center for Environmental Education in 1986 (O'Hara et al. 

 1986) . I intend that the following description of types of gear 

 involved in incidental capture enables others to begin collecting 

 concrete information on the level of incidental captures in 

 similar fisheries in the western Atlantic. 



Gill Nets : A gill net is generally a single sheet of 

 webbing suspended vertically from floats (Figure 1) . The net may 

 be floated at the surface, in mid-water, or on the bottom. Gill 

 nets may be fixed in position by means of anchors and floats or 

 may be allowed to drift in currents freely or attached to a 

 fishing vessel (Figure 2) . They are often deployed 

 perpendicularly to the path of migrating fish, such as sturgeon. 



Trammel nets are a type of gill net used for entrapping 

 species that are difficult to catch in a regular gill net (Figure 

 3) . Trammel nets are two or more panels of webbing suspended 

 from a common surface line and attached to a single bottom line. 

 One panel is of a larger mesh (24-32 inches stretched mesh) than 

 the second panel, which may be 8-inch mesh. Fish pass through 

 the larger meshed panel and are caught up in a pocket of the 

 smaller meshed panel. 



Delaware Gill Net Fishery ; Both set and drift gill nets are 

 used. Fixed gill nets are set in upstream tidal areas for 

 shad and in other nearshore waters for sea trout, striped 

 bass, bluefish, croaker, and white perch. Drift gill nets 

 are set in areas of slow moving water in downstream areas of 

 rivers for weakfish and croaker. There are several records 

 of incidental mortalities of Kemp's ridley and loggerhead 

 sea turtles in this fishery (O'Hara et al. 1986, p. 48-50). 



Carolina Gill Net Fishery ; From North Carolina to 

 Georgia, gill nets are used to fish for shad, generally 

 in January through April, and for sturgeon or, more 

 recently, shark. Both drift and set gill nets up to 

 1,2 00 feet long are deployed in rivers and in nearshore 

 ocean waters. In the past, gill nets set in these 

 waters for sturgeon have been associated with high 

 levels of loggerhead strandings early in the spring. 

 Recent restrictions have substantially reduced this 

 incidental mortality (O'Hara et al. 1986) . 



Drift Gill Nets for Swordfish ; Recently, the use of 

 drift gill nets has been introduced into the fishery 



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