Slipped Through the Net: Failing Fish Stocks

ScienceDaily — At the Development Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, the European countries agreed to rebuild their fish stocks to levels that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, no later than 2015. According to scientists of the Excellence Cluster "Future Ocean," that goal is already out of reach: Of 54 analysed stocks, only saithe, western horse mackerel and Baltic sprat have a sufficiently large stock size and are fished at a sustainable rate. The state of 12 stocks, including North Sea cod, plaice and halibut, is so bad that they can not recover sufficiently until 2015, even if all fishing was halted. Other stocks could reach the target if fishing pressure was reduced substantially, but that has not happened so far.

These results were published by Dr. Rainer Froese, Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) und Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß, Walter-Schücking-Institute of International Law of the University of Kiel, in the journal Fish and Fisheries. The German scientists, both members of the interdisciplinary Excellence Cluster "Future Ocean," point out that the continuous overfishing of European stocks constitutes a breach of the precautionary principle, which is a binding principle of Community law.

"The precautionary principle is a binding legal principle for the organs of the European Commission and for the Council of Ministers. The current practice of continuous overfishing violates international law as well as Community law," says Prof. Dr. Alexander Proelß, expert of international law at the Walter-Schücking-Institute.

The obligation to manage fish stocks such that they can produce the maximum sustainable yield is part of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982, which entered into force in 1994. In the "Johannesburg Plan of Implementation" (2002), the European Union as well as Norway, Russia and Iceland, agreed to rebuild their fish stocks to the level that can produce the maximum sustainable yield, no later than 2015. "Until now, the provisions of the Law of the Sea have not been introduced into national law, and the plan of implementation had no visible impact on European fisheries management," says Proelß.

On the contrary: the fishing quotas for 2010 decreed by the Council of Ministers again exceed by far the catches that would allow the rebuilding of the stocks. "If this practice continues, Europe will miss by more than 30 years the goal that it has propagated," says Dr. Rainer Froese, fisheries biologist at the Kiel Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR).

Yet, catches from sustainably managed stocks could be substantially higher. "Our analysis suggests that landings could be 79% higher if stocks had been managed according to the international agreements," says Froese. "However, in European waters stocks are intentionally managed such that they stay close to the brink of collapse. This policy makes no sense from an ecological or economic point of view."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121155224.htm

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Marine Reserves Can Be An Effective Tool For Managing Fisheries

Monitoring of marine protected areas ranges from scuba surveys of fish to intertidal surveys of invertebrates and algae. (Credit: Photos by Robert Schwemmer/NOAA)

ScienceDaily — Studies conducted in California and elsewhere provide support for the use of marine reserves as a tool for managing fisheries and protecting marine habitats, according to biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

A recent study in the Gulf of California, for example, confirmed the validity of a key concept behind marine reserves--the idea that offspring produced in a protected area can replenish the stocks of harvested species outside the reserve.

"It seems really obvious, but it had never been tested," said Peter Raimondi, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC and coauthor of a paper describing the findings in the journal PLoS One.

"We created a model to predict the dispersal of larvae outside the reserves, and the results were completely consistent with our predictions," he said.

Raimondi is involved in a collaborative project (called PANGAS) in which researchers are working with Mexican fishing communities to study and manage fisheries in the northern Gulf of California. Local fishermen in the area of Puerto Peñasco set up a network of marine reserves as part of a community-based effort to manage their resources. Ecological and social studies conducted before, during, and after the establishment of those reserves enabled the researchers to track the results.

Raimondi emphasized that resource managers have a wide range of tools at their disposal and must take into account both biological and social factors in choosing the best approach. Many species, such as tuna and squid, move around too much to be protected by setting aside certain areas. For species that tend to stay put, marine protected areas can range from no-take reserves to various levels of limited harvesting, and sometimes involve restrictions on who can harvest fish in an area rather than how much can be taken.

The establishment of marine protected areas along the California coast, as called for in the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), has been controversial. A network of protected areas was established on the Central Coast in 2006, and a plan for the North-Central Coast was adopted in August 2009. In Southern California, a task force will soon make recommendations to the state Fish and Game Commission, while on the North Coast the planning process is just getting started.

Raimondi and Mark Carr, also a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC, have been actively involved in this initiative. In addition to serving on science advisory teams, they are engaged in an intensive monitoring program to track the effects of the reserves that have already been established.

"We are monitoring those areas at unprecedented levels. It's a comprehensive effort to characterize the populations and the ecosystems so that we can compare the responses to different types of protection," Carr said. "Monitoring studies around the globe systematically show positive responses within protected areas. We want to really identify what aspects of reserve design are important in influencing those benefits."

According to Carr, it will take a few more years of monitoring to see the effects of the Central Coast reserves. In the Channel Islands, however, where reserves were established in 2003 (separately from the MLPA process), surveys have yielded the kinds of results scientists expect to see in protected areas. For example, fish species targeted by fishermen tend to be bigger and more plentiful within the reserves.

This effect is important, because studies have shown that larger, older females are much more important than younger fish in maintaining healthy populations of species such as West Coast rockfish.

"When you have a protected population, you not only get spillover effects when fish swim out of the reserve and get caught, you also have major effects on larval production," Carr said. "The bigger, older fish in the reserve produce a lot of larvae that replenish the fished populations outside."

Carr, who contributed to a report on the first five years of monitoring in the Channel Islands, said that the conclusions are limited by a lack of data collected before the reserves were created. It is possible that some of the observed differences existed before the areas were protected, but such doubts will be erased if current population trends continue, he said.

In Puerto Peñasco, the shellfish harvested by local fishermen grow and reproduce quickly. As a result, the fishermen saw beneficial effects within a year after they had established a network of reserves. Subsequent events, however, underscored the role of social factors in the success of fishery management efforts. A second paper, published in PLoS ONE in July, describes how, after its initial success, the local reserve system collapsed due to poaching by outsiders.

"The whole thing got wiped out due to disruption of the social structure that had supported it," Raimondi said. "Scientifically it was really interesting, but for the people who experienced it on the ground, it was terrible."

Richard Cudney-Bueno, a research associate at UCSC's Institute of Marine Sciences and cofounder of the PANGAS project, is the lead author of both papers. "Here was a group of fishermen that had already seen some declines in the shellfish they harvested. This led to the implementation of community-based efforts to manage their resources, including the establishment of marine reserves," he said. "We found that local control of community resources can work, but there has to be broader government support to back up the local efforts."

A native of Mexico City, Cudney-Bueno has been working with Mexican fishing communities and conducting ecological and social research in the Gulf of California since the mid-1990s. He now has a joint position with UCSC, the University of Arizona, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The first reserve in the Puerto Peñasco area was established in 2001 around an island. Cudney-Bueno and other researchers, working with a Mexican nonprofit organization (Centro Intercultural de Estudios de Desiertos y Océanos), trained the fishermen to monitor shellfish populations in and around the reserve. "The response was really quick, so they could see a classic reserve effect one year later," Cudney-Bueno said. "That led to more areas being closed, and the first paper shows the effects of the network of reserves."

The cooperative was so successful it was recognized by the Mexican government with a Presidential Conservation Award. But word spread quickly along the coast about the thriving shellfish populations in Puerto Peñasco, and other fishermen from outside the community began to move in and poach from the reserves. After poaching began, the system of cooperation that had established and protected the reserves broke down.

Now, the situation is beginning to improve again, Cudney-Bueno said. The Mexican government has created one of a handful of exclusive fishing zones in the Gulf of California, giving the local cooperative the exclusive legal right to harvest shellfish in the Puerto Peñasco area.

"They now have a strong management plan with legal rights and government support, so I think they will be able to get back to where they were before the poaching started," Cudney-Bueno said. "I see it as part of the evolution of a management system. Social change takes time, and it really hasn't been that long. A lot is happening now in Mexico and around the world as local people are increasingly asking for control over their resources. Various fishing communities in Mexico, including lobster and abalone fishermen in Baja California, have moved forward with the establishment of their own marine reserves and government-backed forms of territorial-use rights."

The PANGAS project, which brings together experts from UCSC, the University of Arizona, and several collaborating academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico, is working with other fishing communities in the Gulf of California to develop management plans for the region's marine resources.

"PANGAS is now working with the Mexican government to build management plans for a series of species in the northern Gulf of California," Raimondi said. "It's interesting to compare that with the MLPA process in California. The approaches are very different, and it has to do with differences in government and social structures."

According to Carr, the California MLPA process is now being used as a model in other parts of the world, most notably in the United Kingdom.

Souce: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091109142129.htm

CBS 5 News Anchor Tests Canned Tuna For Mercury

CBS5 - Canned tuna is a healthy source of vitamins and protein, but it also contains some levels of mercury. Whether it's enough to require posted warning signs is being debated in a state appellate court. In the meantime, CBS 5's Sue Kwon conducted her own unscientific experiment tracking consumption of canned tuna and measuring levels of mercury.

The experiment involved eating 20 five-ounce cans of albacore tuna over 20 days and not eating seafood that could contain mercury and impact the experiment.

Canned tuna is packed with lean protein and omega-3 fatty acids which studies show benefit the heart, brain, and eyes.

But even the fishing industry acknowledges, it does contain mercury. It's a chemical that could be toxic at certain levels and erase those benefits as well as cause problems in an unborn baby.

California's Proposition 65 requires warning signs to be posted at the fish counter. The law is intended to protect California citizens from chemicals known to cause cancer or other reproductive harm. Canned tuna companies won a legal fight to be exempt from the law, but now the California Attorney General's office is appealing that court decision.

"We know that methyl mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can harm the unborn baby," said California Deputy Attorney General Susan Fiering. "In Minamata Bay, (poisoning of the 1930s-1960s) mercury caused children to be born with cerebral palsy, with small brains, and undersize brains."

Forrest Hainline who represents the three biggest canners, (Bumblebee, Chicken of the Sea, and Starkist,) said warnings in supermarket aisles would decrease fish consumption and have a negative impact on public health.

"It would be completely conflicting with federal law which wants women to understand that while they are pregnant or may become pregnant, eating fish is good for them and their unborn children," Hainline said.

The problem is doctors really don't know how much tuna it takes for a person to accumulate higher levels of mercury.

While the test sounds risky, she was not pregnant or about to become pregnant and was not expected to hit levels associated with side effects.

After eating 20 cans, a phone call comes from the doctor. Dr. Jane Hightower said, "I want you to stop your experiment. It's not worth the risk."

Dr. Hightower is an expert in mercury poisoning and a known critic of the fishing industry. She is not happy with the National Fisheries Institute website which said canned tuna is "healthy" for pregnant women and they can safely eat 6-ounces or a little over a can a week.

She tells pregnant patients, "Why eat mercury at all when you don't have to? Canned albacore tuna has an average of .35 parts per million and they say tuna is a low mercury fish."

It can be considered "low" if one compares it to the legal mercury limit of 1 part per million set by the Food and Drug Administration. But, the allowed level of mercury in the U.S. is double that of Canada (.5ppm), Europe (.5ppm), and Japan (.4ppm). So elsewhere, canned tuna would not be considered a "low" mercury fish.

The experiment illustrates that even at levels below the federal limit, mercury accumulates in the body reaching what Dr. Hightower and an independent lab flagged as "high" levels in a short period.

At the start of the experiment, Sue Kwon's blood mercury level was low at 4 micrograms per liter. In 10 days, it went to 8.9 micrograms per liter. Then in 10 more days, it climbed to 17.2 micrograms per liter. By day 20, it had quadrupled. "Anytime in a woman's body she reaches a 14 or 15 she stands a chance of knocking IQ points off her child's brain," Hightower said.

If the experiment continued, Dr. Hightower said the mercury would accumulate mercury faster and the level would spike. Hightower said, "You probably would've doubled again in another 10 days and then probably leveled out at in a steady state somewhere in the 50 range."

Hightower's patients with blood mercury levels that high have experienced these symptoms. "They get body aches, joint pain, muscle aches, head ache, trouble sleeping, troubles with thinking and memory, stomach upset," she said.

The canned tuna industry said there are no scientific studies proving a link between mercury levels in fish and specific health effects.

"These are issues that need to be discussed with a doctor not the grocery store checkout clerk or the Safeway manager. It's that simple," Hainline said.

Fiering believes consumers need in-store education materials. "There are a lot of women out there who don't use computers and don't see their doctors regularly and are not getting regular checkups and they're not getting the information they need," she said.

According to the Department of Public Health, 17 micrograms per liter is higher than the average exposure which is about 6 micrograms per liter. The fishing industry recommends eating 2-3 servings of seafood a week including canned tuna. A "serving" of canned tuna is half a can, about enough to top 3 crackers. Obviously, the experiment involved eating more than what's recommended.

Even so, at 17.2 micrograms per liter, Sue Kwon did not feel side effects. But, she is lowering her mercury level by avoiding tuna and sweating it out at the gym. She is continuing to eat fish as recommended for nutrients and health benefits. But, she is making sure to mix the varieties and eating tuna along with fish that do not contain as much mercury.

Source: http://cbs5.com/consumer/tuna.mercury.test.2.951871.html

Aqua Cats Are Eating the Oceans

by Captain Paul Watson

For years I have been reporting on the incredible waste of marine wildlife for the purpose of feeding domestic livestock.

Feeding rendered fish to livestock has made the pig and the chicken two of the most prolific aquatic predators on the planet.

As the incompetent government fisheries bureaucracies around the world scream that seals, dolphins, whales and sea-birds are eating up all the fish, entire populations of numerous marine species are being scooped up to feed factory farmed chickens and pigs or to raise captive salmon in over-populated aquatic concentration camps.

But there is another terrestrial based dominant marine predator – the voracious house cat!

This week a study by Dr. Giovanni Turchini and Professor Sena De Silva of Deakin University in Australia lends credibility about my past reports that domestic house cats are eating more fish than many seal species.

According to the report, 2.48 million tons of fish is used globally by the global cat food industry every year.

Compared to this the Grey seals of the North Atlantic consume a mere 314,000 tonnes of fish. Harp seals, the species that the Canadian government has demonized as a voracious fish eater (who would have thought, they eat fish eh) eats according to the Canadian government, 890,000 tons of capelin, 186,000 tons of arctic cod, 37,000 tons of Atlantic cod, and 350,000 tons of sand lance each year for a total of 1,393,000 tons of fish.
Harps seals and Grey seals combine eat an estimated total of 1.7 million tons or 780,000 less than the world’s domestic housecats.

In Australia alone domestic housecats consume an average of 13.7 kilograms of fish a year which exceeds the Annual per capita consumption of 11 kilograms of fish and seafood consumed by Australian hominid citizens. Cats alone are eating more fish than people.

Most of the fish fed to cats includes sardines, herring, anchovy and capelin, the same fish that provide the foundation for a food chain that supports the larger fish like cod, tuna, swordfish, as well as marine mammals and birds.

It is these same so called forage fish that are caught in enormous amounts for use as fishmeal for livestock and farmed raised salmon. These fish are also utilized for fish oil and even fertilizers.

These small fish are literally the grass that the larger fish, seabirds and sea mammals graze and depend upon. Their mass exploitation has led directly to the crash of major fisheries.

It is one of the greatest crimes of irresponsibility for the fishing industry to be wiping out these small fishes for fish meal, cat food, and fish oils.

“While much of the criticism has been on the grounds that forage fish could be better used for human consumption directly, particularly amongst the poorer nations of the world, rather than in the production of food for farmed fish, little attention has been paid to the amount of forage fish used by the pet food industry,” Dr. Giovanni Turchini said.

“Pet ownership is increasing globally. The pet food industry is moving towards a constant increase of production and manufacturing and marketing premium and super-premium products. These gourmet pet foods contain a significant amount of fish that may be suitable for direct human consumption, while different raw material unsuitable for human consumption, such as by-products of the fish filleting industry, could be used.”

Dr. Turchini believes the estimated forage fish consumption in the pet food industry brings to the forefront a much needed debate in an area that warrants further and urgent investigation. Other sectors that make use of wild catch for non-human food production such as fur animal rearing, feed for ornamental fish, bait and attractants for recreational fishing, and bait for commercial crayfish industry also need to be monitored.

“The central issue is not an advocacy of pets versus aquaculture or other agricultural/animal husbandry activities, but the need for a more objective and pragmatic approach to the use of a limited and decreasing biological resource, for human benefit.”

That is Dr. Turchini’s position. My own position is that the fishing industry must leave the small fishes alone to sustain the larger fish, the marine mammals and the sea-birds. Fish is not even a natural food for cats and gourmet fish food for cats is simply a display of ridiculous extravagance. Salmon farming is an incredible waste of fish from the ocean and feeding fish to pigs and chickens is the most irresponsible utilization of living resources imaginable.

These small fishing industries are ecologically criminal operations that are now targeting zooplankton for conversion into a protein paste for livestock. Humans along with our domestic animals are literally eating away the life support systems of our oceans and humanity will pay dearly in the future for this ecologically insensitive exploitation.

Blaming seals for eating the fish that we feed to cats is both ecologically arrogant and ignorant.

Yet no one would think of clubbing kittens to death like we do baby seals. If anyone were to do that, the screams of indignation and horror would be enormous yet we spoil one fish-eating species that does not naturally eat fish while bashing out the brains of another species that evolved to live in harmony with fish species in a valued prey predator situation.

Seals control fish populations that predate on other fish populations. For example the harp seal preys upon capelin and mackerel that feed on young cod. Fewer seals mean more capelin which means a higher young cod mortality. Seals also disseminate nutrients into the sea in the form of feces, afterbirth and their own bodies when they die. Domestic cats contribute absolutely nothing to the marine eco-system except harmful foreign bacteria and viruses flushed into aquatic systems from their fecal material. Yet governments and fishermen demonize the seals as they catch millions of tons of fish to feed to the cats.

The seals work for a living, the cats don’t have to do a thing for their meal from the sea except to be ornaments for the vanity of humanity.

Any person who feeds fish to their pet cats is involved in perpetuating an ecological crime. Any person who feeds gourmet fish to their cats is displaying a level of ecological ignorance that is appalling.

In our oceans, seals are being slaughtered, puffins are starving, sea-birds are disappearing as the oceans turn to lifeless deserts before our eyes.

In the United States alone more than 85,000 fishing boats ravage the oceans, stripping life from the bottom, from the surface, and from mid-water levels, turning over rocks, smashing coral, wreaking the structures that provide shelter to younger fish. Life in our oceans cannot survive this onslaught of heavy gear, long lines, traps, drift nets, drag trawlers, purse seine nets and poisons.

Even the tropical coral fish are not safe as we pull them from the sea by the millions to feed the aquarium pet trade. These fishermen extract them with bleach in many cases, killing many in the process.

Raytheon has a fish finder that they sell with the motto of “fish can run but they can’t hide.”

The industry seems to be proud and boasting of their ability to eradicate fish from the sea.

If we can’t even stop feeding fish to our cats then how are we ever going to stop the destruction of our oceans?

I was raised in a fishing village. I was raised on fish, lobsters, scallops, clams, oysters and even seaweed. I don’t eat fish anymore. I view it as an ecological crime because I have seen their numbers diminish and I’ve seen the eco-systems go from bountiful to lifeless in my lifetime and it horrifies me that we can be so insensitive and so ecologically stupid.

This week I checked out the fish market in my local grocer. There were Chilean sea bass there, endangered but still for sale. The cheapest fish were the farm raised freak fish with their artificial color and their soggy sickly flesh. There were fake crab legs made out of pollack converted to artificial crab with chemical dyes and scent, there were octopus and quid and plenty of mussels and oysters. People were paying $20 for a small package of raw tuna for sushi and there were swordfish and shark polluted with mercury.

To look at the fish market there seems to be no shortage of fish yet to keep those shelves full, the largest assault fleet ever conceived with over two million ships and boats ravage and rape the oceans every day, literally vacuuming life from the sea. From every port in the world these boats head out to deploy weapons of mass destruction in the form of drift nets, seine nets, drag nets, longlines, troll lines and in some case they literally use a large vacuum to scoop up fish from the sea.

This armada ranges from massive multi million dollar drag trawlers and purse seine clippers to decrepit scows with longlines and rusty hooks held up with empty bleach bottles.

This kind of merciless hunt and destroy approach would never be tolerated if we were to pursue terrestrial wildlife in this manner. We contemptuously call the meat from giraffe, elephant, gorillas and hippos by the name of “bush meat” and dismiss the Africans in the Congo who eat it as being a part of the problem contributing to the diminishment of wildlife in what is left of the African wilderness.

Yet large predators like tuna, shark, swordfish and mahi mahi are simply “aquatic bushmeat.”

Hunting down a lion and slaughtering it is no different than hunting down and killing a shark. Slaughtering an elephant on the savannah of Africa is no different than slaying a large bluefin tuna in the North Atlantic.

When poor Africans kill a giraffe to eat, we complain over a meal of swordfish or between bites of tuna at the sushi bar.

It’s our typical and particular western form of disassociation and demonstrates our complete alienation from the eco-systems that support us.

The evolution of life in the sea is being heavily influenced by the rapid and recent introduction of terrestrial aquatic predators like the pig, the chicken, the housecat and the human being.

These new predators have created a chaotic assault upon marine life that is rapidly diminishing all species within our oceans. We are literally eating our oceans towards ecological collapse.

It’s hard to picture that cute little kitten munching on a meal of gourmet tuna as an agent of aquatic destruction but the reality is that cats along with people, pigs and chickens are dangerously consuming life from the seas.

Captain Paul Watson is Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Where are the fish? Ocean fisheries in trouble

Scientists, politicians, and fisherman alike know there's a problem. Smaller fish and smaller catches suggest that the world's oceans are no longer producing at their full potential. The bounty of the sea is becoming less generous -- scientists estimate that the number of large fish in the oceans has fallen by as much as 90% since the 1950s. Improvements in technology have made it easier for fisherman to find and harvest more fish than ever before while demand for sea life products -- which are consumed by both the rich and poor -- is at an all time high.

While global marine catches have yet to fall far from peak levels, a recent report (Review of the state of world marine fishery resources) from the The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's Fisheries Department says 77 percent of the world's fish stocks are "fully exploited" -- producing catches that are already at or very close to their maximum sustainable production limit, over-exploited, depleted, or recovering. The proportion of stocks FAO classifies as "under-exploited" has fallen to 3 percent, while the amount of "modertately exploited" stocks stands at 20 percent.

Several of the world's important fisheries -- including the cod and haddock fishery of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in the north Atlantic -- have collapsed and increasingly, fisherman are turning to smaller, less attractive, and less accessible species to make up for the shortfall of premium species. Trawlers are now fishing waters more than a mile deep to catch species such as the Orange roughy that few would have considered edible or useful a decade ago. These species are also at risk of overexploitation. In the case of the orange roughy, the southeast fishery of Australia saw its orange roughy catches fall from over 50,000 tonnes in 1990 to 5,579 tonnes in 1997.

Worse, the amount of waste in commercial fishing is staggering. More than 80 percent of catch in some fisheries may be by-catch, or species other than the species for which the fishing gear was set. Bycatch, also called incidental catch, is typically discarded at sea and may include fish, corals, sea turtles, and dolphins.


Fishermen race for fish
The fundamental problem with facing the management of the world's fisheries is the "tragedy of the commons." Since in many areas, ocean fish are essentially an open access resource there is no incentive for an individual fisherman to restrain his catch. If an individual fisherman conserves for tomorrow, he is only providing someone else with the resource today.

Looking for a solution
Assigning property rights may help the situation and in some areas such schemes have showed signs of success. On the open ocean however, it is considerably more difficult to enforce boundaries and set binding fishing limits. Plus, there is no guarantee that local fisheries will not be overexploited by commercial interests. As some wealth countries have depleted their own fisheries, they have moved into poor countries, buying fishing rights -- often from corrupt bureaucrats -- and then continuing their unsustaiable plunder of marine resources.

Some have argued that a global network of marine parks could help protect and restore some of the world's most impacted fisheries, while aquaculture -- which has expereinced tremendous growth in recent years -- could supplement protein needs. But in order for any sort of conservation plan to be successful, all the involved parties must be brought to the table to hammer out a mutually agreeable plan. If past summits are any indication, this could take a very long time.

You can learn more on the state of the world's fisheries at http://www.fao.org/fi/default.asp

orginal story from: http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0504-rhett_butler.html

NOAA Awards Grant to World Wildlife Fund To Support Innovative Ideas to Reduce Bycatch

NOAA’s Fisheries Service has awarded a $364,000 grant to the World Wildlife Fund in support of the 2009 Smart Gear Competition, which awards prizes for innovative gear designs that reduce fisheries bycatch.

Bycatch occurs when fishermen catch unwanted fish species or wildlife along with their intended catch. Adaptations to fishing gear can reduce bycatch by allowing non-target species to escape from gear or avoid being captured. Fishermen who observe bycatch problems first-hand have developed some of the most effective methods to selectively target commercial species.

“The Smart Gear Competition is a model for cross-sector collaboration among government, conservation organizations, industry groups, fishermen and the scientific community,” said James Balsiger, NOAA’s acting assistant administrator for fisheries. “All parties involved are working together to find solutions.”

The two-year NOAA grant to WWF will support the competition, plus extensive testing to further develop the winning designs. Launched in 2004, the competition has received entries from fishermen, chemists, engineers and inventors in previous years, resulting in hundreds of proposals from dozens of countries.

WWF plans to award a total of four prizes for the most promising technological developments: one grand prize of $30,000; two runner-up prizes of $10,000; and one special East African regional prize of $7,500. The competition is accepting entries until June 30.

“WWF views the International Smart Gear Competition as an important tool in helping to identify simple, powerful change within fisheries around the world,” said Mike Osmond, senior program officer for the WWF fisheries program. ”Fishermen themselves are often the greatest innovators when it comes to effective ideas for reducing bycatch, and this competition seeks to identify those ideas with the greatest potential and reward them with cash prizes, as well as helping to advance the idea towards commercial adoption.”

Previous Smart Gear Competitions have resulted in gear that minimizes bycatch of cod and flounder in the Northeast, juvenile red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, and seabird and harbor porpoise in fisheries around the world.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

For more information or to submit a gear design entry, visit the Smart Gear Web site.