Whale-safe Fishing Gear?

November 2, 2016 New England

More and more whales are becoming snarled in fishing gear, often dying slow, painful deaths. Two Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) engineers have invented a lobster trap device that they say could help whales avert entanglements and, at the same time, might allow currently restricted waters to be safely reopened for lobster fishing. In New England’s offshore lobster fishery, long vertical ropes or “lines” connect the traps on the bottom to floats on the water’s surface, so fishermen can locate their trawls and drag them back up. “The number of vertical lines in offshore areas is fairly staggering—about 20,000,” said WHOI engineer Keenan Ball who designed the new device with WHOI engineer Jim Partan. Read the story here 09:49

invented a lobster trap device, Whale-safe Fishing Gear, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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The New England groundfish debacle (Part III): who or what is at fault? Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet

It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries.

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

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