New Net Timer Could Save Sea Turtles From Drowning

The logger was built under a $25,000 federal contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by Onset Computer Corp., a Bourne-based supplier of data loggers for energy and environmental monitoring. It starts recording water depth every 30 seconds once the net drops below two meters. If the net stays under beyond a preset time limit, the logger records it, and the infraction can be discovered when regulators download its data.

The device's early tests at sea have been successful, and work is ongoing to toughen it for the real-life rigors, such as being banged on fishing boat decks. The company expects it to cost between $600 and $800, an expense that would fall to fishermen.

Even when the logger is perfected, regulators know limiting how long the nets stay underwater is no cure-all as they devise rules, which they hope to propose for public comment by 2010, to meet a new federal requirement to protect sea turtles from trawler fishing nets.

Some environmentalists say turtles shouldn't be kept underwater at all because even relatively short times of being trapped underwater without oxygen hurt them.

Griffin says there's also not enough data on how trapped turtles fare in colder waters, so no one really knows how long they can be kept under and survive.