NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Since mid-April, federal fisheries agents on the 1,631-mile Gulf Coast have spent nearly all their time making sure shrimpers are using equipment designed to let sea turtles swim safely out of shrimp trawls out of escape hatches, officials say.
The current federal push began in Mississippi because of a high spring spike in the number of dead turtles washing ashore. Necropsies of those still intact enough for dissection indicated they had drowned.
 
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