Technique change
Alternative gear means changing the type of gear used in a fishery, to one that maintains commercial viability but poses a lower risk to wildlife.
Gear modification
Modifying the colour of nets and ropes may make fishing gear more visible to non-target species of wildlife, reducing the likelihood of wildlife-gear interactions, and thus bycatch incidences.
Discard and offal management is the safe offloading of waste materials away from hooked lines or hauling operations to reduce risk of attracting seabirds.
This gear modification involves replacing sections of the near-invisible monofilament ‘leader line’ in static nets, with highly-visible black nylon netting.
This gear modification involves increasing the visibility of nets to seabirds (and potentially marine mammals), in order to alert them of the presence of gear and reduce the likelihood of seabird-gear interactions.
Increased net depth can place nets out of the range of diving seals, thus reducing the risk of entanglement.
Gear device
LED lights are designed to be attached to the ropes on fishing nets in static and driftnet fisheries, to increase visibility of the gear to a wide range of non-target species. Different patented designs are available.
Looming eye buoys aim to deter diving seabirds from entering the area around static gillnets, by affixing pairs of conspicuous “eye-spots” on floating buoys at the end of a tall pole.
Net attendance refers to fishermen watching over nets for the duration of time that the gear is in the water. The presence of fishermen is thought to warn off seabirds from the area and facilitate safe handling if birds are bycaught.
Explore the Bycatch Mitigation Hub to find possible measures to reduce bycatch
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