Research and development of bycatch reduction devices.
See global map of acoustic deterrent studies
Incidental capture of franciscana
The Consortium is testing whether ropes that have greater stiffness or fish under greater tension may be effective for reducing entanglements. The stiffness or tension would reduce the ability of the rope to bend, allowing animals to slide off any rope encountered. The Consortium is measuring rope tension under different environmental conditions and studying the fisheries that use tense rope to determine how effective it may be to reduce bycatch.
Scientists believe that vertical fishing lines pose a serious entanglement threat to whales. In 2012, New England Aquarium scientists tested whether whales could see and avoid different color vertical lines.
Many species of elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) are incidentally caught in pelagic longline fisheries. Sometimes shark bycatch exceeds the amount of target fish that is caught (e.g. tuna).
The University of North Carolina Wilmington conducted tests on common commercially available longline hooks to measure the force required to pull the hooks through the soft and hard tissues of short-finned pilot whales, Risso’s dolphins, and false killer whales. The researchers found that the different materials the hooks were made of influenced how they bent or broke when pulled through the odontocete tissue.