Excluder devices

These can consist of a grid of metal bars or mesh placed usually within the neck of a trawl that has an opening for escape at either the top or bottom. Examples include “skylights” which consist of a mesh opening located at the top of the codend. ”Skylights” can be combined with guiding funnels that create visual and tactile stimuli to direct finfish towards the “skylight” escape sections. A different but similar type of design is the fisheye (including Gulf and yarrow fisheyes and bigeyes) which are openings typically forming a rigid frame constructed of aluminum or steel rods and placed along the top center portion of the codend (i.e. Catchpole and Revill 2007). Typically, large animals that strike the bar exit through the opening, while the smaller target species pass through the bars and are captured in the net or codend. Examples of excluder devices in trawls are the Nordmore grid, the Turtle Excluder Device (TED), and the Sea Lion Excluder Device (SLED). A sea turtle excluder chain mat is used in the Northwest Atlantic scallop dredge fishery. A new modification to pound nets may reduce sea turtle bycatch by replacing the upper two-thirds of the leader netting with vertical ropes spaced wide enough apart to let sea turtles swim through without becoming entangled (DeAlteris et al., 2005).