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[EN VIDÉO] Lily, turtle injured by a hook and plastic, found the sea At the beginning of 2020, Lily the turtle was found injured by a hook and poisoned with plastic… After being treated by the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of the Marineland association, here she is back at the sea!
Small-scale fisheries are vital for the survival of coastal human populations. One of the major problems raised by the use of fishing nets is their non-selective nature. If they thus make it possible to capture interesting prey from the socio-economic point of view, many species in danger of extinction also come to die there. These bycatch are mainly turtles, marine birds and mammals as well as sharks and rays. The combination of small lanterns with fishing nets has already shown that lighting allows birds and Marine mammals to avoid these deadly pitfalls, but studies on the subject have focused on certain taxa.
An overall positive impact on non-target species
A recent study published in Current Biology reports the impact of these lighted nets on the total bycatch biomass of a fishery in Mexico. The authors explain that the use of these lantern nets allowed the reduction of 63% of the biomass of bycatch.
Among this biomass, they observed a 95% decrease in elasmobranch species (sharks and rays), 81% jumbo squid, 48% fish such as California flounder and sea catfish, and 51% sea turtles. According to a previous study, the light nets is, in theory, in the spectrum visibility of species not targeted by fishing and alert them to the presence of a danger. The use of these nets to reduce the number and biomass of bycatch is therefore very promising because it does not, moreover, generate any reduction in number of shots targeted.
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