“We don’t even have the basic science to get the rules of the game right.” “Right now we’re flying blind,” said Mark Zimring, an environmental scientist for The Nature Conservancy focused on spreading video monitoring to large-scale fisheries around the world. Also, observer coverage has been suspended altogether in the vast region since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, even though the roughly 1 billion hooks placed in the water each year has barely ebbed. Observer coverage of the Pacific’s longline fleet, which numbers around 100,000 boats, is around 2% - well below the 20% minimum threshold scientists say they need to assess a fish stock’s health. The stakes are especially high in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean - home to the world’s largest tuna fishery. “We’re still in the infancy stages,” said Brett Alger, an official at NOAA charged with rolling out electronic monitoring in the U.S. About 600 of those vessels are in the U.S., which has been driving innovation in the field. Only about 1,500 of the world’s 400,000 industrial fishing vessels have installed such monitoring systems. “If you’re going to sail, you just turn the cameras on and you go.”ĭespite such advantages, video monitoring has been slow to catch on since its debut in the late 1990s as a pilot program to stop crab overfishing off British Columbia. “This isn’t your grandfather’s fishery anymore,” said Captain Al Cottone, who recently had cameras installed on his 45-foot groundfish trawler, the Sabrina Maria. Some setups allow the video to be transmitted by satellite or cellular data back to shore in real time - delivering the sort of transparency that was previously unthinkable. For as little as $10,000, vessels can be equipped with high-resolution cameras, sensors and other technology capable of providing a safe, reliable look at what was once a giant blind spot.
“Nobody wants them there, and when they aren’t being threatened or bribed, the data they provide is deeply flawed because it’s a proven fact that fishermen behave differently when they’re being watched.”Įnter electronic monitoring. “The fact is human observers are annoying,” Hager said.
The result, scientists fear, could be that well-intended initiatives to replenish fish stocks and reduce unintentional bycatch of threatened species like sharks and sea turtles could backfire: By adding to the regulatory burdens already faced by America’s skippers, more fishing could be transferred overseas and further out of view of conservationists and consumers. And China - the world’s biggest seafood supplier with a record of illegal fishing - appears unlikely to embrace the fishing equivalent of a police bodycam. Only a few countries can match the U.S.′s strict regulatory oversight. It’s a brisk business as demand for sustainably caught seafood and around-the-clock monitoring has exploded from the Gulf of Alaska to the Straits of Florida.īut taking the technology overseas, where the vast majority of seafood consumed in the U.S. mandates aimed at protecting dwindling fish stocks. Hager’s Maine-based start-up, New England Maritime Monitoring, is one of several companies seeking to help commercial vessels comply with new U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
