For fishers working the inky dark night, it can be difficult to keep endangered or unwanted animals out of their nets. While lighted nets can reduce the bycatch of sharks and sea turtles, their batteries are short lived, expensive to replace, and not always easy to dispose of. The lights themselves are also heavy, can make the nets sag, and not easy for fishers to work with.
Enter solar-powered light buoys. A team from Arizona State University recently worked with coastal gillnet fishers in Mexico to develop lights that charge with the sun and function like buoys. The LED lights can be threaded onto the float line like any other buoy and flash on and off to conserve energy. They can even stay on for five days without sunlight.Â
Importantly, the net-illuminating gear is also highly effective at preventing sea turtles from getting tangled in the gillnets. During controlled experiments with the nets in Mexico’s Gulf of California, turtle bycatch rates were reduced by 63 percent when using the solar-power illuminated nets than with control nets. While not statistically significant, their experiments also found a higher catch rate of yellowtail fish in the illuminated nets. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Conservation Letters.
“The results were pretty exciting,” study co-author and marine biologist Jesse Senko said in a statement. “It’s a win-win in the sense that you’re getting a light that lasts significantly longer, and it also seems to reduce bycatch just as effectively as lights that require replaceable batteries.”
Along with climate change, pollution, diseases, and pollution, fishing gear entanglement is one of the primary threats to endangered sea turtles. While there are signs of recovery among some species including green sea turtles, their current population numbers overall are only a small fraction of the total that once existed.
“Sea turtles are important for maintaining healthy oceans, which are needed to sustain resilient fisheries,” Senko said. “They have been around for over a hundred million years, and they fulfill ecological roles that no other species fulfill.”
Developing fishing gear that’s practical to use but less harmful to not only sea turtles, but other threatened species sharks, is one way to address this issue.Â
To do this, the team is partnering with the small-scale coastal fisheries that provide nearly half of the world’s seafood, according to Senko. These groups are crucial to sustaining food, income, and livelihoods for coastal communities.
The idea for using solar-powered LED lights into buoys initially came from brothers Juan Pablo Cuevas Amador and Felipe Cuevas Amador. Both are fishers in northwestern Mexico who use gillnets.Â
“They took us into account and gave us the freedom to give our opinions and make modifications,” said Juan Pablo, who is a co-author of the study along with Felipe. “For us, it’s important that it be done in collaboration because with what they know and what we know, we can do quite interesting things.”
After completing the fishing experiments alongside Senko’s team at ASU, the Cuevas Amador brothers asked if they could keep the solar-powered lighted buoys. The gear made fishing easier since they did not have to waste too much time and effort removing turtles from nets.
“When I heard that, I knew we were onto something,” Senko said. “And they’ve been fishing with these lights ever since. As far as we know, they are the only fishers on the planet fishing with solar-powered lighted nets.”
The team is now working with manufacturer Fishtek Marine to make commercially available solar-powered lighted buoys for fishing nets. They could hit store shelves within two to three years, according to Senko. They are also working to better understand sea turtle’s responses to the light.Â
Importantly, it highlights the importance of fisher-led ideas when tackling marine conservation issues. According to Senko, these ideas are, “where the real magic happens; that’s the meaningful innovation. Because their ideas went into it, they’re more likely to want to use it and to share that information with their friends and their community and with neighboring communities.”
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