Our oceans are full of sophisticated, elaborate traps: nets, hooks, fishing lines. Designed to catch animals destined for our dinner tables, they often catch other wildlife as well.
This accidental harvest is known as poaching and results in deaths every year millions of sea animalsincluding whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles and seabirds. Nets and tools can suffocate animals or cause fatal injuries; even when the animals are thrown back into the sea, they often die. Catching is also a dilemma for anglers – entangled creatures can destroy gear, costing time, money and fishing reputation.
For decades, conservationists, researchers and fishermen have developed ways to minimize bycatch of various species in various fishing stocks around the world. But implementing these solutions is often difficult, and many mitigation strategies are never widely implemented.
Fishing gear that entangles dolphins, porpoises and whales is a great danger to the animals. Here are tooth tracks from a North Atlantic right whale named Snowcone (identified individual #3560) as she swims 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 is a great danger to the animals. Here are tooth tracks from a North Atlantic right whale named Snowcone (identified individual #3560) as she swims with her calf in the waters off Georgia.
Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources NOAA Permit #20556
However, some approaches now have a proven success rate, and more may be on the horizon. Recent research has explored networks equipped with lights; even low-tech tricks like making gear out of plastic water bottles are practical for anglers to use and promise to reduce some species of bycatch.
Despite the challenges, researchers are hopeful. “There aren’t many conservation issues that I’m aware of where industry, conservationists, consumers, fishermen and resource users all want the same thing,” says marine biologist Matthew Savoka, a research scientist at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station. “Every stakeholder wants to catch less.”
Keeping turtles out
The problem of retention has always existed. “It’s a conflict inherent in the whole idea of fisheries,” says marine scientist Nancy Knowlton, marine biologist emerita at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “If you have something designed to catch animals, you’re almost always going to catch some things you don’t want to catch.”
