How new fishing tech can reduce bycatch of turtles and other creatures
Our oceans are full of sophisticated and perfect traps: nets, hooks, fishing lines. Designed to capture animals destined for our tables, they often capture other wildlife as well.
This accidental harvest is called bycatch and results in the deaths of millions of marine animals each year, including whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles and seabirds. Fishing nets and gear can suffocate animals or cause fatal injuries; even when animals are thrown back into the sea, they frequently die. Bycatch also poses a dilemma for fishermen: entangled creatures can destroy equipment, costing time, money and damaging the reputation of fisheries.
Over the decades, conservationists, researchers and fishermen have developed ways to minimize various types of bycatch in different fishing stocks around the world. But putting these solutions into practice is often a challenge, and many mitigation strategies are never widely implemented.
Fishing gear that entangles dolphins, porpoises and whales poses a major threat to the animals. Here, gear traces from the North Atlantic right whale Snowcone (known individual #3560) swim with her calf in the waters off Georgia.
Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources NOAA Permit #20556
Fishing gear that entangles dolphins, porpoises and whales poses a major threat to the animals. Here, gear traces from the North Atlantic right whale Snowcone (known individual #3560) swim with her calf in the waters off Georgia.
Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources NOAA Permit #20556
Some approaches, however, now have a proven success rate – and more may be on the horizon. Recent research has explored nets equipped with lights; Even low-tech tricks, like equipping gear with plastic water bottles, show promise of reducing certain types of bycatch while still being convenient for anglers to use.
Despite the challenges, researchers remain hopeful. “To my knowledge, there aren’t many conservation issues where industry, conservationists, consumers, fishermen and resource users all want the same thing,” says marine biologist Matthew Savoca, a research scientist at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station. “Every stakeholder wants less bycatch.”
Keeping Turtles Away
The problem of bycatch has always existed. “It’s a conflict intrinsic to the whole idea of fishing,” says marine scientist Nancy Knowlton, a marine biologist emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “If you have something designed to catch animals, you’ll almost always end up catching things you didn’t intend to catch.”
