High Visibility Leader Line
WHAT ARE HIGH VISIBILITY LEADER LINES?
Modifying the colour of fishing gear can make it more visible to non-target species of wildlife, reducing the likelihood of wildlife-gear interactions, and thus bycatch incidences.
Leader line gear modification involves replacing sections of the near-invisible monofilament ‘leader line’ in static nets, with highly-visible black nylon netting. This means that non-target species of wildlife such as seabirds are able to see gear more easily, and are likely to avoid it, thus reducing gear-seabird interactions.
CURRENT RESEARCH & USE
This experimental technique has been trialled for seabird bycatch in the small static gillnet sea-trout fishery in Filey Bay, North-east England, and is thought to have been effective at reducing incidental seabird bycatch (pers comms). High visibility white nylon was also trialled, but deemed less effective than the black colour. However, the modification was trialled alongside net attendance, so it is not known if high visibility leader lines alone are effective.
This page was last updated on 12.02.21.
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