#gillnets

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This should happen everywhere! Nice California!

Drift gillnets Phase-out: The new law, Assembly Bill 1056, officially ends the use of large-mesh drift gillnets in state waters. Transition: The bill includes a buyout program to compensate fishermen for surrendering their permits and nets, encouraging a transition to more sustainable gear like deep-set buoy gear. Protection: This measure is intended to reduce bycatch of whales, dolphins, and sea turtles, which can get accidentally trapped in these long, nearly invisible nets. Set gillnets Phase-out: The new law also phases out set gillnets as existing permits become non-transferable, meaning they cannot be passed on and the fishery will end as permit holders retire. Protection: This ban will be particularly focused on areas like the Channel Islands to protect marine biodiversity, as set gillnets have been shown to incidentally catch a large number of other species. Management: The law also gives the California Department of Fish and Wildlife authority to require third-party observers on fishing vessels to better manage the fishery.

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Every day, thousands of hooks and nets meant for fish end up catching seabirds — a global problem that is pushing many seabird species to the brink of extinction. But no fishing gear may do more damage than the gillnet, which entangles and kills at least 400,000 seabirds each year.

What if all it took to save them was a pair of googly eyes?

It’s not quite that simple, but a team of scientists, conservationists and engineers are developing a device that has the potential to save many seabirds from gillnets. This device, known as the looming-eyes buoy, is essentially a floating scarecrow.

A prototype was recently tested on long-tailed ducks in Küdema Bay in Estonia. The results of this study, published on Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, suggest that looming-eyes buoys can reduce the number of seabirds by up to 30 percent within a 165-foot radius. Although the looming-eyes buoy won’t completely solve the problem, it’s a step in the right direction, experts say.

Excerpt from this story from Seafood Source:

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has expanded its ban on imports of shrimp and other seafood caught in the habitat of the critically endangered vaquita porpoise, which lives in Mexican waters in the northern Gulf of California.

It is estimated that just 10 vaquita remain alive on earth, down from an estimated 19 individuals in August 2019, and from around 560 animals in the 1990s. The population has been decimated by entanglements in gillnets set to catch shrimp and totoaba, another endangered species.

The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act mandates the U.S. government act to prohibit importation of seafood caught using fishing gear that kills marine mammals in excess of United States standards, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Senior Attorney Zak Smith said in a press release. The import ban is placing “enormous pressure on the Mexican government to stop the use of deadly gillnets that are entangling, drowning, and killing the vaquita porpoise,” he said.

“This is exactly how the law protecting marine mammals is supposed to work: if Mexico’s fisheries kill vaquita at a rate that violates U.S. standards, the U.S. must ban imports," Smith said. “Mexico has no choice but to eliminate the destructive fishing taking place in the northern Gulf of California that is driving the vaquita to extinction. It’s the only hope the vaquita has for survival, and it is required if Mexico wants to resume exporting these products to the United States.”

Excerpt:

Sea turtles, dolphins, whales, and other marine wildlife in California waters will get a reprieve from an indiscriminate fishing gear—drift gillnets—thanks to state lawmakers’ passage of a bill to phase out the destructive equipment, which is used to target swordfish off the West Coast.

The California Legislature passed Senate Bill 1017 with bipartisan support today. The legislation gives the swordfish fleet—now fewer than 20 active boats—a transition period to stop using drift gillnets. It also provides compensation for fishermen who agree to permanently retire their nets and related permits. The money for the buyout will come from a combination of private and public funds. Fishermen will still have other options for catching swordfish, including deep-set buoy gear, which has proven highly effective and far less threatening to non-target sea life after more than seven years of on-the-water testing.

The measure, which now moves to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk for approval, follows decades of effort by a range of stakeholders to end the use of nets that kill more dolphins and porpoises than all other West Coast fisheries combined.

Excerpt:

Catching swordfish off the coast of California today means leaving milelong mesh nets deep in the ocean overnight. But what fishermen pull up is mostly not swordfish. For every one of the hefty, long-billed swordfish in a net, it’s estimated that there are four other marine animals entangled there.

The particular kind of drift “gillnets” used by swordfishermen have holes sized to ensnare swordfish (by their gills, hence the name). But the nets also capture dolphins, whales, sharks, sea turtles and numerous other species of fish. At least half of this “bycatch” is tossed back out to sea — in the case of dolphins, sometimes without their fins (which get tangled in the nets), leaving them no chance of surviving. Most of the mammals trapped in the nets are already dead or dying by the time the nets are raised, having spent hours thrashing underwater. But the marketable fish that are trapped by happenstance are hauled in and sold.

There is a United Nations treaty that outlaws large-scale gillnets in international waters because of their destructive effect on marine life, and the federal government has banned this kind of fishing in federal waters off the East Coast. (An attempt to limit gillnet fishing in federal waters off the West Coast fizzled last year when the proposal was shelved by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.) Other states have prohibited gillnets too, leaving California as the last state in the nation to issue permits for their use. Those permits are good only for federal waters off the California coast.

A floating scarecrow with googly eyes could help reduce the number of seabirds caught in fishing nets, researchers have said.

The "looming-eyes buoy" with big eye spots and a looming movement can create a visual deterrent close to gillnets, a curtain of netting that hangs in the water, to prevent birds diving into them, getting entangled and drowning.

A group of scientists, including from Birdlife International and the RSPB's Centre for Conservation Science in the UK, worked with marine engineers to develop the device, which was then tested on long-tailed ducks in Estonian waters.

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