Thursday 15 November 2007

"More whales, dolphins and porpoises die every year by getting entangled in fishing gear than from any other cause, so inventions like this are critical for enabling smarter fishing in our seas," said Sally Bailey, North East Atlantic Marine Manager at WWF-UK.

Inventor, Andy Smerdon of Aquatec Group in Hampshire received the $5000 award for his Passive Porpoise Deterrent device which should significantly reduce the number of harbour porpoises and other cetaceans caught in fishing nets.

"I am confident that this new application of underwater acoustics can bring benefits to fishermen struggling with marine mammal bycatch problems, not only in Europe but throughout the world," said Andy Smerdon on winning the award.

The device works by which works by using resonant acoustic reflectors that increase a fishing net's 'acoustic visibility', and do so in a less complicated way than the currently used 'pingers'.

When a porpoise emits a click, the reflectors transmit back a stronger echo, making the reflectors appear to the porpoise to be much larger objects than they are, and thus alerting them to danger.

"Bycatch is a critical environmental and economic problem, but not one without solutions, as demonstrated by the number of entries in this year's International Smart Gear Competition. The passive porpoise deterrent is simple, cost-effective, and could radically reduce the amount of bycatch in UK fisheries," added Bailey.

Hundreds of thousands of marine animals are killed worldwide year on year through destructive fishing practices. The International Smart Gear Competition was created by WWF and a diverse range of partners to bring together fishermen, policy makers and scientists to find solutions to reduce the unnecessary decline of vulnerable species due to bycatch.

Since the 1990s, acoustic pingers have been effective in reducing cetacean bycatch. However, their relatively high cost has hindered their wider implementation, as have concerns over reliability and whether they cause noise pollution to the animal's environment in the long term.

Grand prize for haddock saver

The Smart Gear Grand Prize went to a team of US Rhode Island inventors for a device aptly named 'The Eliminator' which captures haddock while reducing the accidental netting of other marine species. Their invention beat 70 entries from 22 countries to win the top prize. It works by taking advantage of the haddock's natural tendency to swim upwards, not downwards which is the norm for other fish.

Sea cucumbers not forgotten

Mike Sharpe from Devon in the UK was given an honorary mention for his environmental beam trawl which applies square mesh panels to beam trawlers to reduce bycatch of invertebrates, fish and sea-bed dwellers called benthos. Benthos include creatures like sea cucumbers.

Seabirds and snappers

Runner-up prizes were awarded to Argentinean Diego Gonzalez Zevallos who devised a simple plastic cone, which if attached to trawling warp cables can dramatically reduce seabird deaths.

Glen Parsons from the University of Mississippi created a cylinder device. This was widely tested on red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico and was another runner-up winner in the awards.


The awards were sponsored by the Sea Fish Industry Authority (Seafish) which works across all sectors of the UK seafood industry to promote good quality, sustainable seafood.

For more information on the International Smart Gear competition visit www.smartgear.org