21/04/2005 – WWF's International
Smart Gear Competition announced three new
winning solutions to prevent the accidental
maiming and killing of marine mammals, juvenile
fish and sea turtles that become ensnared
by fishing nets and longlines, while also
improving the efficiency of commercial fishing.
“These solutions safeguard our living oceans,”
said Carter Roberts, president and CEO-elect
of WWF-US.
“When WWF began the Smart Gear competition,
we looked for real-world solutions to protect
the fantastic variety of marine life, increase
efficiency and profitability for fishermen,
and preserve the bounty of the sea for future
generations. Today, I’m happy to announce
our competition reeled in three promising
innovations.”
These three practical solutions are the inventions
of a former high-school biology teacher and
commercial fisherman; a North American team
worked with the chemical properties of fishing
ropes and nets; and a team of Indian scientists
familiar with the challenges of changing fishing
practices and technologies in a developing
country.
“While it’s obvious how vital the ocean’s
been to me, we’re all dependent on an ocean
full of life and, in turn, it’s dependent
on our actions,” said grand-prize winner Steve
Beverly, a fisheries development officer for
the Pacific Community Secretariat. “It’s just
common sense to create smarter fishing gear.”
An international panel of expert judges unanimously
awarded the grand prize and US$25,000 to Beverly,
an American working in New Caledonia and a
former high school biology teacher, commercial
fisherman, commercial diver and tugboat operator.
Beverly’s invention consists of weighing down
a main fishing line with lead weights and
releases, or “set” the baited hooks at depths
deeper than 100m, which allows longline fishermen
to minimize encounters with sea turtles while
maximizing their tuna catch.
He noted that fisheries’ logbook data and
studies of sea turtle behaviour indicated
that sea turtles swim and become hooked in
shallower waters than tuna, the target species
of most longline commercial fishing. According
to researchers at Duke University in the US
State of North Carolina, more than 200,000
loggerheads and 50,000 leatherbacks are accidentally
caught annually by commercial longline fisheries.
Successful testing of Beverly's idea has
been carried out by three vessels fishing
for tuna in Pacific waters. In initial testing,
42 per cent more bigeye tuna were caught using
Beverly’s new weighted, deep-set gear.
Smart Gear runners-up
An innovative combination of glowing ropes
and stiffer nets — the results of collaboration
among a chemist, biologist and fisherman —
was recognized as runner-up in the “cetaceans”
category.
More than 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises
are estimated to die every year from entanglement
in fishing gear, more than from any other
cause.
Chemist Norm Holy from Pennsylvania, fisheries
biologist Ed Trippel from Canada and fisherman
Don King from Massachusetts joined forces
to develop gear to help marine mammals detect
and avoid gillnets before coming into contact
with them, as well as allow them to escape
unharmed if they still become entangled. To
create avoidable, detectable, safer gear,
the team tinkered with the chemical properties
of the ropes.
A group of scientists from the Central Institute
of Fisheries Technology in India — Dr M.R.
Boopendranath, Dr P. Pravin, T.R. Gibinkumar
and S. Sabu — were also recognized as runners-up
for their invention to reduce the bycatch
of juvenile shrimp and fish in shrimp trawls.
Trawl fishermen in India and other tropical
fisheries depend on both finfish catches and
shrimp catches to keep their commercial operations
viable, but bycatch of juvenile fish and shrimp
are of low commercial value and threaten future
populations and catches.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization, fishermen lose hundreds of millions
of dollars a year because of the loss of juvenile
fish and non-target fish to bycatch. This
team developed a system of angled metal grids
and net meshes that catches and sorts mature
shrimp and finfish, while allowing juvenile
shrimp and fish to swim away unharmed. Sorting
mature shrimp and finfish between the lower
and upper parts of the net helps to reduce
the time the trawler crew spends sorting on
deck. This enhances profitability: allowing
more time for productive fishing and preventing
shrimp from being crushed under the weight
of fish and bycatch hauled up on deck,and
making the shrimp more valuable in the market
place.
“Reducing wasteful practices like bycatch
is essential to the health of our oceans and
a win-win proposition for fishermen, fish
stocks and our marine ecosystems,” said Malcolm
McNeill, a judge for the International Smart
Gear Competition and vessel manager of global
fishing company Sealord Group Ltd.
“Fishing responsibly and reducing bycatch
is a top priority for Sealord so we're eager
to test some of these Smart Gear ideas in
our operations.”
The International Smart Gear Competition
was created by WWF-US in May 2004 to bring
together partners representing fishermen,
fisheries, policy and science to find solutions
that will reduce the unnecessary decline of
vulnerable species due to bycatch. Applicants
from 16 countries applied their ingenuity
and expertise to solving this global problem.
WWF and its partners will assist the winners
with making their ideas commercially viable.
NOTES:
• Participants in the International Smart
Gear Competition were asked to develop fishing
gears and/or methods that increase selectivity
for target fish species and reduce bycatch
of non-target species in ways that still allow
fishermen to profitably catch-target species.
The competition was open to anyone, including
professional gear manufacturers, backyard
inventors, fishermen, students, engineers
and biologists.
• There were three categories for entries:
gear that reduces sea turtle bycatch, gear
that reduces cetacean bycatch, and gear that
reduces bycatch of any other non-target species.
Winning entries will receive assistance for
refining their designs and advancing them
toward broader use.
• The International Smart Gear Competition
judging panel included representatives from:
the American Fisheries Society, Center for
Sustainable Aquatic Resources at Memorial
University of Newfoundland, Fisheries Conservation
Foundation, Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute,
Institute of Marine Research in Norway, Inter-America
Tropical Tuna Commission, Marine Wildlife
Bycatch Consortium (includes the New England
Aquarium, Duke University, the University
of New Hampshire, and the Maine Lobstermen’s
Association), New Zealand-based Sealord Group,
Ltd., SeaNet (an extension service for fishermen
in Australia), Southeast Asian Fisheries Development
Center, U.K. Center for Environment,Fisheries
and Aquaculture Science, U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (serving as technical advisor),
University of Rio Grande in Brazil, and WWF.
