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Protected species bycatch newsletter (PDF, 558K)

Summary

Mitigating the environmental effects of commercial fishing is an ongoing challenge, requiring the involvement of many different parties. Operationally however, fisheries impacts are determined by the day to day practices of fishers themselves. While fishers’ main goal is to maximise the efficiency of catching fish, best practice is to do this whilst minimising environmental impacts, including bycatch of protected species.

Best practice measures that reduce unintentional captures of protected species are many and varied, and have a diversity of origins. Sometimes, New Zealand fishers are somewhat removed from the development of these methods. For example, a number of effective mitigation measures have emerged from international fleets, and been tested by scientists with experimental results promulgated in the scientific literature. Consequently, an ongoing issue for practitioners working on bycatch reduction lies in communicating best practice messages amongst fishers.

This communication requires reaching a spatially disparate audience with highly variable levels of interest and technical knowledge, and using diverse fishing practices. Audience-specific newsletters and magazines are one relatively straightforward way to expose large numbers of fishers to bycatch reduction information.

Publication information

This report was commissioned by the Department of Conservation, Project MIT2012-05.

By J.P. Pierre