Ocean crisis caused by destructive fishing p2 of 2

The impacts from hook and line fishing, purse seines
and midwater trawls ranked relatively low on the scale,
though these methods are also known to snag
unintended species including dolphins, sea turtles and
seabirds.

An olive ridley sea turtle hooked by a longliner.
(Photo by Thomas Gorgas,
© Sea Turtle Restoration Project)

"This is the first study to synthesize the science on these issues, but also to use social science methods to incorporate expert judgments. It gives managers a place to start in their deliberations concerning the relative levels of bycatch and habitat impacts from different fishing methods," said coauthor Ratana Chuenpagdee of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

"When you present knowledgeable experts - fishermen, conservationists, and academics - with science based information about gear impacts, and ask them to compare these collateral damages without knowing the names of the gear involved, they give surprisingly consistent answers," Chuenpagdee added. "It's unusual to find such uniform agreement about anything, much less fishing practices. But when you take out personal bias linked to particular gears, there is surprising consensus across these different communities."

The authors hope that their findings will stimulate local, regional, national and international conversations about how to reduce the collateral impacts of fishing.

A longliner crew cuts off the pectoral fin of a shark.
The fins can be sold to Asian markets for use in shark fin soup; often the rest of the shark is discarded.

(Photo by Roberto Vargas, © Sea Turtle Restoration Project)

"Too often this problem has been overlooked or ignored because of the lack of comparative measures. Our results indicate that there is more common starting ground on these issues than people have thought," said Chuenpagdee.
The scientists stressed that in many cases, there are ways to reduce the impacts of fishing, but noted that change will require political will and action. They suggest that managers and fishers consider "shifting gears" - phasing out or modifying destructive gears, and moving fisheries toward more environmentally friendly options.

Gear innovations, such as turtle exclude devices (TEDs)
and streamers on longlines to scare away seabirds, have
reduced bycatch in some fisheries, but propagation of
these "gear fixes," through the global fishery has been
slow, and in some cases governments have failed to fully
implement or enforce the use of even proven technologies.

A leatherback sea turtle swimming underwater.
(Photo by Scott Eckert, © Sea Turtle Restoration Project)

"Often the best solutions stem from fishermen themselves, but without political or financial incentive to promote development and use of 'gear fixes' or new operating procedures, destructive practices will continue," said Morgan.
Spatial management, where the use of certain gears is prohibited in sensitive habitats or popular breeding or feeding grounds of at risk species, is another option. But in the end, some gears may have to go.

"We need to think about restructuring fisheries around not using trawlers. Trawling has to be curtailed and phased out as a way of interacting with the environment - it is just too destructive," argued Daniel Pauly, University of British Columbia, a fisheries biologist. "As a society, we make these types of judgments all the time - we don't have to do everything that we can do, in fact we have rules of restraint to prevent damage - we don't allow people to drive over the speed limit just to get somewhere faster, we don't allow machine guns to hunt deer, and we need not allow wasteful destruction of our marine resources."

Several U.S. states, including California, Alaska, Florida and Virginia, already have regulations limiting the use of bottom trawls. The scientists hope that this innovative approach to evaluating fishing gears and incorporating judgments by various interest groups will be applied in all areas, catalyzing new attention and action to reduce the bycatch and habitat destruction across fishing gear types.

A nesting leatherback sea turtle
one of just 5,000 believed to still be nesting along
the Pacific Ocean.
(Photo by Herda Pamela Hutabarat,
© Sea Turtle Restoration Project)

"I eat fish that commercial fishers catch, I favor a strong fishing industry. But I also know that the way people fish is destructive and undermines the future of fisheries and fishermen alike," said Norse.
"If we are going to have fish and sea turtles and seabirds and marine mammals in the future, we have to fish in way that dramatically reduces the collateral impact of commercial fishing operations. With all the knowledge and creativity of fishermen and scientists, we can fish better. We can, and we must - for the future of the oceans and the sustainability of fisheries," Norse concluded.

To learn more about different fishing gear types, visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium website at: http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/cr_seafoodwatch/sfw_gear.asp

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