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A new design for breakaway gillnet floats has received the Canadian Whale Institute's Eubalaena Award for 2001. Eric deDoes of Plante's Lobster Escape Vents, Inc., in Somerville, Maine, received a cash prize of $10,000 for the design.
Honorable Mention, with a cash prize of $2,500, was awarded to José Rivera, Ed and Shari Wyman, and Andre and Robin Labonte for their trap line storage devices to prevent whale entanglements. The Visionary Award, also with a cash prize of $2,500, went to Dianne Allen for her degradable polymer fishing line.
The Canadian Whale Institute established the Eubalaena Award Competition to encourage the discovery of new ways to prevent entanglements of right whales in fishing gear.
This year's awards were announced by Sarah Haney at the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, and the cash prizes were presented on behalf of the Canadian Whale Institute and the New England Aquarium.
The new design for breakaway gillnet floats resembles gillnet floats currently in use. The outside football shape is made up of two halves that are fastened together by screws. Internally, there are two barbed clips that grasp each end of the float line. The clips come in different sizes to accommodate rope of different sizes and breaking strength. The line inside the float is then cut in two. When a whale encounters the float, one end of the float will pull free, reducing the risk of entanglement.
The winning trap-line storage devices to prevent whale entanglements, one for shallow water and one for deep water, keep rope coiled at the bottom until the end of the trap fishing period. A galvanic time release corrodes at a pre-selected and predictable rate, releasing the float to rise to the surface for recovery. These devices seek to reduce the time that a vertical trap line is in the water column, thus reducing the exposure to right whales, as well as to other species of marine mammals and sea turtles.
Dianne Allen, recipient of the Visionary Award, employed a chemical approach for her degradable polymer fishing line, in which chemicals would be added to the mix during manufacturing. Using this approach, a fishing net retains its original mechanical properties for a specified and controllable period, followed by rapid degradation under certain conditions, at which point the net would break free and no longer be able to entangle a whale. The degradation can be accelerated with several different chemicals and light. More research on this concept is needed, but the approach looks promising.
The other two finalists in the competition were Becky Woodward, who designed a net gun that remotely deploys a tail harness (a lasso) during the disentanglement process; and David Silvia, for a spring-loaded fly-away knife to cut entangled line, with a blunt version that can grab entangling line.
A total of 21 ideas were submitted in this year's competition by 18 people from all over the world. The jury looked especially for devices that were practical, could be implemented quickly, and could make a difference in the survival of right whales. They also wanted to promote creative thinking and "outside the box" ideas. In the first round of the competition last July, five finalists were chosen and given funding to further develop their ideas. The finalists demonstrated their devices in October at the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium meeting, where the winners were chosen and announced.
For more information about the winning ideas, contact: Eric deDoes (breakaway gillnet floats), 207-549-7204 or plantes@ctel.net; José Rivera (trap line storage devices), 787-831-3426 or jarivera@msn.com; Dianne Allen (degradable polymer fishing line), 818-788-9471.
Right Whale News November 2001
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