Southeast Fisheries Science Center (U.S.)

"The following sea turtle handling protocols describe the tools and techniques for removing fishing gear from incidentally captured sea turtles. They should be followed whenever an interaction, such as a hooking and/or an entanglement, with a sea turtle occurs. The equipment and techniques described here are intended to reduce sea turtle injury and to promote post-release survival. The document, which updates Epperly et al. 2004, is designed primarily to give specific handling guidelines for removing gear from sea turtles captured in hook-and-line fisheries. Interactions with other gear types (e.g., trawls, gillnets, fixed gear) and species (e.g., fish, marine mammals) are mentioned briefly here, but this is not intended to be a comprehensive guide for interactions with these gear types or species"--Chapter 1, paragraph 1.

Technical Memorandum