Bycatch News

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. 

On Monday, June 27, I took the Casco Bay Ferry in Portland to Long Island Maine with Heather Tetreault and Sarah Paquette from the Maine Lobstermen's Association and Kate Dawson from Maine Sea Grant to meet with local lobstermen and women as part of our project to document lobster fishing practices in Maine. We were lucky to be traveling through the picturesque southern Maine islands on one of the most beautiful days of the summer so far.
  

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.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) determined that the scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini), an Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS), is overfished (NOAA 04/28/2011). 

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."

Over 50 fishermen, whale scientists, fishing gear engineers, rope manufacturers, and marine wildlife disentanglement experts participated in a workshop to examine the dynamics of large whale entanglements in fishing gear.