Bycatch – the unintentional catch of sea turtles in fishing gear – poses a serious threat to sea turtle survival. More than fifteen years ago, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) began to address this problem by requiring the use of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) in Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawl nets…Although all six sea turtle species inhabiting U.S. waters are currently listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA, the government has yet to require TEDs and other bycatch mitigation methods in trawl fisheries that are known to take and even kill sea turtles.