Bycatch News
The Bycatch Consortium was featured in a June 2014 article in The Guardian, An unusual partnership works to make fishing more sustainable.
Since the 1970s, fisheries bycatch has been increasingly recognized as a factor responsible for reducing or liminiting the recovery of marine mammal populations in many parts of the world. A new study from the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction reviews reported marine mammal bycatch from the last two decades.
The Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch has been featured in the August 22, 2011 New York Times Science article, "Fishing Gear is Altered to Ease Collateral Costs to Marine Life".
"The seafood on your plate is not the only animal that gave its life to feed you," is one of the messages from Tim Werner, the director of the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. While fishing for tuna, lobster, or other tasty seafood, we catch, injure, and kill other fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, sea birds, and invertebrates.
I sat down to talk about the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction's work with Andrew Lewin, who founded Speak Up for Blue, a website dedicated to communicating about ocean conservation.
Do circle hooks reduce bycatch?...It depends.
Last week, NOAA hosted over 160 marine scientists, fisheries managers, gear experts, and commercial and recreational fishermen, from 20 countries, in Coral Gables, FL, for the first international symposium on circle hooks in research, management and conservation. While we all came away more informed about circle hooks, we left with more questions about their effectiveness for catching target species and reducing bycatch.
NMFS is recommending that "weak" circle hooks, sized 16/0 or smaller, be required in the Hawaii-based deep-set longline fishery. "Weak" hooks are designed to retain the target catch, but release larger bycatch, like false killer whales (or bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico or pilot whales in North Carolina). The hooks release larger animals by straightening out when the animal puts tension on the line.
Endangered Species Research Theme Section
The technical modifications to fishing gear that the Bycatch Consortium supports were highlighted as important potential solutions to bycatch reduction in this month's Popular Science, "Higher Tech Nets, Hooks Could Stem the Shipload of Fishers' Bycatch."
Jordan, LK, Mandelman, JW and Kajiura, SM. 2011. Behavioral responses to weak electric fields and lanthanide metal in two shark species. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 409(1-2): 345-350.
A collection of tweets from #SMM2013 about fisheries bycatch of marine mammals