The WWF-India team along with Central Institute of Fisheries Technology organised an awareness meet on the use of trawl nets with turtle excluder device (TED) among those engaged in fishing activity, here on Wednesday. Beaches such as Gahirmatha and Rushikulya in Odisha are the second largest nesting centres for the endangered Olive Ridley turtles, after Costa Rica. However, since 2014, there has been an increase in the nesting by about 5 to 10 % along the coastline of Andhra Pradesh from Srikakulam to Visakhapatnam. This has been a cause of worry for conservationists, as the fishermen along the AP coast do not use the trawl nets designed by CIFT with TED. The usage of TED trawl nets is low here unlike in Odisha, and this endangers the turtles, said Vinod M, senior coordinator, marine programme, WWF-India. He said the mating period of the Olive Ridleys was from November to February, adding their survey showed the activity took place in 5-km radius at different places near the coast. We conduct a recce and advise fishermen not to use that area without TED nets. If a TED net is used, turtles have the chance to escape the net through the excluder device, said Mr. Vinod. Raghu Prakash, scientist, CIFT, said that it was important that fisherfolk switched to the TED trawl nets, as the mating and the hatching period of the Olive Ridley turtles clashed with the peak fishing season.