August 21, 2014 — To designers building better nets and lines, bycatch isn't viewed as an inevitability, but as something we can phase out, piece by piece. It's also seen as a battle that needs to be fought alongside fishermen, not against them.
Speaking from his trawler, the 45-foot Proud Mary, off the coast of Massachusetts, one such fisherman, Christopher Brown, said that over the years, fishermen have had to "rethink the game." Brown operates a fishery that's almost completely free of discards; is the board president of the Seafood Harvesters of America, an organization representing stewardship-minded fishermen; and has designed a squid net that reduces bycatch. The net contains an escape route at its base that exploits the bottom-dwelling behavior of unwanted flounder, encouraging them to flee the net through this gap. "We need to look at things entirely differently than we have in the last 30 years," Brown said — and new gear is part of that equation. "It's a matter of enlightened self-interest."
Brown may seem unconventional, but more and more, fishermen are both driving change and being consulted like clients about new gear. "The main focus has to be the fisherman," said Watson. "You have to build something the fisherman is going to use."
For designers, the next challenge is gaining capital. Although Watson has been working on his SafetyNet design for five years, and even though it won the prestigious James Dyson design award in 2012, it's still staggeringly expensive, and Watson has had difficulty hiring a boat that will try out his net on open water.
Designed to free both young and endangered fish, the SafetyNet works by using fitted LED rings, which flash like exit signs to alert smaller fish. The fish can then escape by squeezing through the rings. There's also a panel in the net that separates tighter mesh at the top from larger mesh below, allowing nontarget, bottom-dwelling species such as cod to escape through the bigger holes. With lights and panel working in tandem, "You can start almost herding the fish under the water," Watson said.
There is no silver-bullet solution for a problem as broad as bycatch; instead, each new piece of gear responds uniquely to a species' size, shape and behavior. "The more we know about the ways we can stop different things being caught, the more we can make bespoke nets," Watson said. As Hall puts it, "Slowly, you attack the different angles of the problem, and you solve it."
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