Scientists tied plastic bottles to fishing nets – and couldn't believe what happened next…. The first study attached glass and plastic bottles to more than 1,600 fishing nets in Zanzibar, Peru and Brazil and compared the results with nets that didn’t have bottles.
Two new studies have explored the possibility of using plastic bottles to prevent dolphins getting caught in fishing nets and found that it can work, according to the latest reporting on the story.
Details
Similarly, in Zanzibar, the addition of bottles to nets on the surface resulted in them catching more tuna but they didn’t catch any dolphins (including in the control nets, which didn’t have bottles) so they couldn’t come to a conclusion about how effective this was.
“Attaching plastic bottles to fishing nets can reduce dolphin bycatch globally and is something that every fisher can afford,” he says, in a development tied to the same story.
Per Berggren, a professor at Newcastle University wondered whether adding plastic and glass bottles to gillnets could help the dolphins locate the nets and avoid getting entangled.
“The bottles are securely attached to the nets and we did not lose any plastic bottle during the trials.”.
Two studies tested the theory that attaching glass or plastic bottles to gillnets could prevent dolphins from getting caught, according to the latest reporting on the story.
The idea is that the air inside the empty plastic bottles help to reflect the sound from the dolphins’ echolocation clicks while metal bolts were put inside the glass bottles to create a clinking sound as they moved in the water.
In Peru, where nets are hung near the surface of the water, the bottles didn’t make a difference to the number of dolphins, porpoises or turtles caught in the nets but did increase how many of their target fish they caught.
“Plastic bottles showed promise in Brazil, potentially reducing dolphin bycatch while increasing fish catch, though further trials are needed to confirm this,” the authors write in the paper.
Statements
«My fingers were trembling.»
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“The difference we saw in the success of the bottom set nets compared to the nets near the surface, may be that the surface water is a noisier environment reducing the efficacy of the plastic bottle reflectors,” explains Berggren.
When marine scientists found a plastic bottle floating in the ocean, they were shocked to see this large animal living inside, unable to escape, according to the latest reporting on the story.
Available information indicates that “My fingers were trembling.” Divers were removing ghost nets in the Mediterranean, when THIS happened….
The use of plastic bottles also increased the number of sharks caught, in a development tied to the same story.
Separately, Gillnets are a type of fishing net that hang vertically in the water to trap fish but they often unintentionally catch other marine life, including dolphins.
