March 10, 2020 โ The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:
Doctoral student Melissa Cronin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Grand Prize winner in ISSFโs International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Seafood Sustainability Contest. She receives a $45,000 prize from ISSF for her contest entry, โIncentivizing Collaborative Release to Reduce Elasmobranch Bycatch Mortality,โ which proposes handling-and-release methods that purse-seine vessel skippers and crew can use to reduce the mortality of manta rays and devil rays incidentally caught during tuna fishing.
Her winning proposal calls for cooperative workshops with purse-seine skippers and observers, offering financial rewards for the design, testing, and onboard implementation of feasible, scalable techniques for safely removing rays from vessel decks.
It also includes training observers in tagging rays to track their post-release survival. Rays, in addition to sharks, are the species groups most vulnerable in the purse-seine fishery. In the Indian Ocean, for example, rays comprise the majority of bycatch in tuna fishersโ free-school sets: bycatch overall on such sets represents 0.9% of the total catch, and 34% of that is rays.
Ms. Cronin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Action Lab at UC Santa Cruz studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Learn more about her research experiences and winning idea in her ISSF blog post and video.
In addition to the $40,000 Grand Prize, the award includes a trip, with an estimated $5,000 value, to a tuna event. ISSF will arrange for Ms. Cronin to present her proposal at a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) event this year.