To Angry Shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico, TED Stands for Terrible Turtle Trouble

It’s just a boxy metal frame with slats inside and a trap door on top. But it has shrimpers all along the Gulf Coast up in arms, fearful that it will decimate their harvests and drive them out of business.

It’s called a TED, short for Turtle Exclusion Device or Trawling Efficiency Device, depending on whom you talk to.

It’s also called “an Edsel” by Tee John Mialjevich, a burly Cajun who is president of Concerned Shrimpers of Louisiana.

“We lost the oil industry,” he said. “Now we’re going to put more people out of work with TEDs.”

Standard Equipment

Designed to keep an endangered species of sea turtle from being snared by shrimpers’ nets, TEDs will be standard equipment on most shrimp boats under a federal regulation that takes effect July 15.

But shrimpers say the devices are inefficient and will cause shrimpers to lose at least 10% to 20% of their catch. The devices cost as much as $450 each.

Add the cost of the equipment for more than 26,000 shrimpers to the dollar value of the estimated lost catch in Louisiana alone and the impact could be $61.9 million on a $206-million state industry, the shrimpers contend.

“The only way to make us use it is to force it on us,” Mialjevich said.

Show of Force

He has emerged as the key protest leader, rallying independent fishermen from Florida to Texas. After a series of small hearings in towns along the Gulf Coast, he called for a show of force, and a crowd of 5,600 answered March 4 in this southeastern Louisiana city.

A TED is placed inside a shrimp boat’s cone-shaped net. It is designed so that any turtles swept into the wide mouth of the net will hit the metal slats inside the frame and be deflected, knocking open the trap door of the TED and floating away to freedom. Opponents said thousands of shrimp will swim out along with the turtles.

Environmentalists say TEDs are necessary to save the Kemp’s Ridley turtle, whose numbers are dwindling in the Gulf and the Atlantic. They also say TEDs are thoroughly tested, work well and can even enhance a shrimper’s catch by eliminating fin fish that must be culled from the harvest.

Edwards Unconvinced

Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards said he is unconvinced.

“If you put one of the things behind a (riding) lawn mower and drag it in a swimming pool, it works pretty good!” Edwards said in a fiery speech to more than 5,000 of his Cajun brethren gathered at the Thibodaux Civic Center recently to protest TEDs.

Edwards and Louisiana Atty. Gen. William Guste pledged to go to court if necessary to stop implementation of the TED regulation, written by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

It isn’t just Louisiana officials who are fighting TEDs. A Texas lawmaker told a meeting of shrimpers in his state that he would ask Congress to step in. And Mississippi Gov. Bill Allain said he has asked federal officials to delay enforcement of the TED regulation.

“I’m asking Congress to put off the requirement for at least a year,” Allain recently told a cheering crowd of 600 shrimpers.

Threaten Lawsuits

But environmentalists have threatened lawsuits of their own if nothing is done to save the Kemp’s Ridley, which is now under the protection of the federal Endangered Species Act.

The only known nesting place for Kemp’s Ridleys is a nine-mile stretch of Gulf beach on the eastern shore of Mexico. Thirty years ago, 40,000 of the turtles nested on the beach on a single day, according to the Washington-based Center for Environmental Education. More recently, no more than 250 a day have nested.

Mialjevich and other shrimpers blame thieves who steal the eggs from the beach. The eggs are considered delicacies, even aphrodisiacs, in some cultures, they say.

But Jack Woody of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said steps had been taken by the Mexican and U.S. governments to prevent egg thefts.

Years of Research

Mike Weber of the environmental center said the shrimpers’ suggestion that turtles be hatched and raised in captivity was not realistic. It will be years, he said, before researchers have enough data to know whether Kemp’s Ridleys hatched in captivity will survive until they reach sexual maturity, which takes 10 to 15 years.

Shrimpers say they capture few turtles and inadvertently kill few of those. “Since 1965, I was on my shrimp boat with my father--he passed away . . .--and I’ve caught six turtles,” Mialjevich said. “They all went back in alive. So what did I do to endanger any turtles?”

But environmentalists say shrimpers in the Gulf and the Atlantic capture more than 47,000 sea turtles each year, many of them members of endangered species, such as the Kemp’s Ridley, green, leatherback or Hawksbill varieties. Almost 12,000 of them die, according to figures from Weber’s organization.