Since our terrible experience of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill courtesy of BP came a resurgence of creating real practical solution to the longline bycatch fishing.
So fishermen and scientists, using cash from selling the recovered oil from the spill worked to test “alternative, low-impact fishing equipment that is not widely used or is new to the Gulf of Mexico.”
According to Pew Research, they are using Green stick gear. It is a trolling method designed to catch yellowfin tuna, and buoy gear for swordfish, could significantly reduce the amount of nontarget animals killed by surface longline fishermen.
As Pew continued to tell The Green Living Guy that if this works (or should I say when the test program demonstrates that the alternative methods offer economically and environmentally viable options to surface longlines) then commercial fishermen, scientists, environmentalists, and fishery managers will work together to secure BP oil spill funds to pay for a gear-transition program.
This low-impact equipment test and using BP spill money would also help pay for this gear and training on its use.
While the results are not in yet, it’s encouraging to see a potential solution to this problem. More importantly, we cannot keep fishing the way we have in the past because it destroys coral reefs and other endangered ocean wildlife.
Common now! Don’t they deserve to be protected now versus being raked over the coals for the sake of fishing today versus when the oceans are destroyed?!?!
For full report see here:
