SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [Seafoodnews.com] – March 20, 2013 – Researchers working with the groundfish fishing industry in the Pacific Northwest have tested a new "flexible sorting grid excluder" – a type of bycatch reduction device that shows promise to significantly reduce the incidental bycatch of Pacific halibut from commercial bottom trawl fishermen.
In a series of tests that included 30 tows off the Washington coast, commercial fishermen were able to reduce the number of halibut taken as bycatch by 57 percent, while retaining 84 percent of the targeted groundfishes, according to Mark Lomeli of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, a multi-state agency charged with sustainably managing Pacific Ocean resources.
The findings are being published in the journal Fisheries Research. Incidental bycatch is a significant issue in many coastal regions including the Pacific Northwest. It occurs when fishing operations result in the discard of non-targeted fish and invertebrates, or through accidental interactions with mammals, seabirds and sea turtles.
It is of particular concern, resource managers say, when these "bycaught" species are overfished, threatened or endangered. The halibut project is the latest success in a series of bycatch reduction projects conducted through a collaboration between NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission.
These projects have captured the interest of the fishing industry, according to Waldo Wakefield of NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, a principal investigator on the project and co-author on the article. "Fishermen are really engaged in the research because they are concerned about getting shut down if the weight of the halibut bycatch approaches a certain threshold," said Wakefield, who works out of Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore.
"The fishermen are not only engaged with the scientists, but they interact with each other and with the net-makers. "In addition to the reality of being shut down, there is a perception issue," added Wakefield, who is a courtesy professor in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. "They don't want to unnecessarily be killing halibut, salmon and other species."
The flexible sorting grid excluder uses two vertical sorting panels that sort fish by size as they progress back toward the codend, noted Lomeli, who was lead author on the Fisheries Research article. The concept to the design is that fish smaller than the grid openings will pass through and be retained, where fish greater than the grid openings – such as the halibut – will be excluded from the net via an exit ramp.
This article originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.