This proposal seeks funding support from the mtca for a two year period to mitigate bycatch of endangered sea turtles in shrimp trawl fisheries of sarawak (malaysia) through the provision of data from…

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) awarded the Marine Research Foundation (MRF) a $227,500 Marine Turtle Conservation Fund (CFDA 15.645) grant to mitigate bycatch of endangered sea turtles in shrimp trawl fisheries in Sarawak, Malaysia. The two-year project, commencing on August 1, 2024 and concluding on July 31, 2026, aims to introduce and provide turtle excluder devices (TEDs) to local fishers, raise their capacity to adapt TEDs to single and double net vessels, and develop enforcement capacity to support implementation of TED requirements. The project also involves deploying time-lapse cameras to collect data on bycatch events, which will be used to create hotspot maps to guide policy and decision-making at the state level. Additionally, the grant will fund a series of workshops and outreach efforts to promote the use of TEDs and build conservation capacity among fishers and government officials. The project is expected to save up to 1,000 sea turtles per year in Sarawak through the widespread adoption of TEDs in the local shrimp trawl fisheries.

This proposal seeks funding support from the mtca for a two year period to mitigate bycatch of endangered sea turtles in shrimp trawl fisheries of sarawak (malaysia) through the provision of data from time lapse cameras to support policy and decision making. We will introduce and provide turtle excluder devices and raise the capacity of fishers to adapt teds to sarawak single and double net vessels. We will also develop enforcement capacity in keeping with requirements under US PL 609 and the US certification scheme. This project builds on the successes of the national level TED programme in malaysia which as of 2017 legally requires teds in shrimp trawl vessels in all east coast peninsular malaysia states. Sarawak is as large as all of the peninsular malaysia states combined but is located across the south china sea on the island of borneo (east malaysia) but has received little attention during the national TED programme. A state workshop was held in 2016 that drew together representatives from the major fishing districts but until now little progress was made towards widespread uptake of teds at the state level. In october 2023 the department of fisheries sarawak approached MRF to expand the reach of our work and run a series of workshops in the state with a view towards legally requiring teds in the coming years. Our project proposes to mirror previous efforts by MRF undertaken at the national level and augment these with data from our time lapse camera program which documents the exact location and time of bycatch events. These data then are turned into bycatch hotspot maps that allow US to better pinpoint the priority areas where teds are required. The data will be a first line of defence in driving policy and decision making at the state level providing the evidence needed to further the TED programme. We also plan on conducting a series of state level workshops and outreach efforts that include demonstration trials and equipping vessels with teds as well as providing capacity to fishers and fishery department officers. IT is estimated that up to 1000 turtles per year will be saved by the use of teds in sarawak alone. This project will be conducted by the marine research foundation in collaboration with the department of fisheries sarawak and the federal department of fisheries malaysia.