Every day, tens of thousands of marine animals struggle and die, tangled up in fishing gear. They aren’t the intended targets for fishermen, but because they dwell in fertile fishing grounds, they often become the victims of fishing practices that aren’t selective enough to screen them out. These casualties, called bycatch, represent a serious threat to biodiversity.
“Bycatch occurs throughout the world in all fisheries and involves many, many millions of animals,” explains Timothy Werner, director of the marine conservation engineering program at the New England Aquarium. “It’s simply the most immediate conservation concern for many species and populations of marine animals.”
Balancing biodiversity against business needs isn’t easy, but the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction, an alliance of fishermen and scientists, is working to find a solution. The nonprofit, which counts the New England Aquarium as a member, supports research to find ways to reduce bycatch. It has combined these studies, which explore a variety of visual and acoustic deterrents, into an online library that it makes available through its website.
As a nonprofit, the consortium doesn’t commercialize its research, but its work could have a massive impact for fishing companies. This balance of conservation and commercial potential has already drawn attention: the consortium won the 2013 “ecosystem conservation award” from Katerva, which recognizes innovation in sustainability.
Fishing for sustainability and profitability
The consortium’s approach and its recognition of the need to protect both fisheries and fishermen is grounded in a unique partnership. Founded in 2004, the consortium brings together fishermen and scientists, two groups that historically share more antagonism than a common cause. Both sides had concerns about the alliance. Fishermen worried that research about bycatch reduction would lead to tighter regulations that would choke off their livelihood. Researchers, on the other hand, viewed the industry as unwilling to change its techniques.
Distrust aside, fishermen and scientists both also realized that they needed each other. The fishing industry must be a central part of any successful maritime conservation effort. And, at the same time, if fishermen hope to avoid restrictive regulations, they need to find effective ways to reduce bycatch without compromising their ability to make a decent living.
In some ways, bycatch reduction could help fishermen become more profitable. To begin with, bycatch is expensive: As Werner points out, finding a turtle in the net instead of, say, a tuna, means “that’s not money in the bank for you”. Industry-wide, the economic impact is staggering. According to research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, bycatch in the US reduces potential fisheries revenue by $427m. In terms of seafood sales, the impact is even greater: bycatch could cost up to $4.2bn annually.
To make matters worse, bycatch can also be destructive – both to the animals and to equipment. Large creatures, such as whales, can cause massive damage to fishing gear. Thus, bycatch reduction could also reduce equipment expenses.
But the biggest concern may be regulation. If fishermen can’t find and adopt good bycatch solutions, they may face regulations that could simply curtail the amount of time that they can fish, said Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which is a member of the consortium. (Case in point: Palau aims to ban all commercial fishing once its current fishing contracts expire.)
“We were trying to solve a problem that, at its core, we didn’t understand,” said McCarron, explaining the reason the lobstermen group teamed up with the scientists. “Our industry was facing with making gear modifications or adjustments to fishing which may or may not help at the end.”
Measuring and monitoring
The nature of the fishing industry makes it hard to quantify the extent of global bycatch. Werner, who is also director of the consortium, notes that 99% of fishermen are small-scale businessmen – often a man with one boat and a few nets.
Estimates for bycatch range widely, from 15%-40% of all catch, depending on the fisheries, Werner said. Some species are more prone to become entangled in nets and other gear because their habitats are fertile fishing grounds. Blue shark bycatch, for example, can reach tens of millions of sharks per year, he explained. More than 80% of the North Atlantic right whales alive today have been entangled with fishing equipment at least once.
Whales, in particular, represent one area in which the consortium has benefited both sides of its odd partnership. Werner recalled one of the early meetings of the consortium, in which one fisherman asked how whales could get entangled with fishing ropes in the first place: “There was a stunned silence because nobody [had] really observed this except maybe once or twice,” Werner said.
That prompted the consortium to support research into how whales see underwater, and to learn how fishermen use their gear. From there, scientists plan to try different methods that might deter the whales from swimming into the nets. Recent research showed that colors could play a role: Whales appear to see colors in the red or orange spectrum sooner than they do green, black or white, Werner said.
McCarron said the color study is promising also because it could allow lobstermen to use their usual equipment – in this case ropes – instead of switching to new gear that might not work as well. Low-cost solutions, such as changing the color of the ropes, are understandably welcome.
Other research that the consortium has supported includes devices that use low-decibel sounds to discourage marine mammals from approaching fishing gear. This method seems to work with species such as harbor porpoises.
After collecting evidence that a particular method could work well, the consortium enlists researchers in other parts of the world to help carry out more field work. The idea is to work concurrently in multiple areas to collect good data as quickly as possible. This multiple-site research method speeds up the process of finding solutions.
“The scale of the threat outpaces our progress with solutions,” Werner said. “If we can make this process a lot more expedient and bring fishermen in right at the beginning, then we’ll have a better chance of not taking 20 to 30 years to make a change.”
2014 Guardian News and Media Limited