Dogfish are a staple of the Chatham fleet.
By Doreen Leggett
With 130 people gathered for an international virtual workshop, a cautionary story was told about a fishery in North Carolina shut down because “little old ladies in tennis shoes” found dead birds on the beach.
Fisheries closures through political pressure is an extreme and often avoidable outcome that didn’t sit well with fishermen, and others focused on more collaborative approaches to protecting birds.
“To put people out of business for a couple of bad days, it seems a little bit radical,” said Greg Connors, who fishes for skate, dogfish and monkfish out of Chatham and Harwich.
Connors was one of a dozen commercial fishermen joining the early February event, the Seabird Bycatch Reduction Strategies Workshop, that brought together participants from Canada, the United States and Mexico.
He and another captain, John Our, were on hand because they had participated in a project that reduced the chance of sea birds getting caught in gillnets while increasing catch.
“It’s a huge success,” said Our, adding improvements were made without mandates on an over-regulated industry. “We don’t need more (regulations) because we have the answer here. We have a blueprint.”
Connors and Our, along with Fishermen’s Alliance staff Aubrey Church (policy director) and Mel Sanderson (chief operating officer), were on a panel talking about a study led by Coonamessett Farm Foundation (CFF), based in Falmouth.
The work was done in partnership with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as part of the Seabird Bycatch Reduction in Northeast U.S. and Atlantic Canada Fisheries Project. Project funding was provided by the Open Ocean Trustees Implementation Group to restore natural resources injured by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill following an oil rig explosion off Louisiana in 2010. Great Shearwaters and other species, harmed by what is considered the largest marine oil spill in history, are found in New England and benefit from the work.
Unintentional catch of shearwaters has historically been an issue in New England gillnet fisheries, though it has decreased in recent years on the Cape.
Around 15 years ago, a shifting Chatham Bar created access issues and fishermen had a limited amount of time to catch spiny dogfish. This prompted fishermen to bait gillnets to try to boost the harvest and shearwaters were diving on the bait, some becoming entangled.
Fishermen in the fleet have increasingly developed and tried out modified fishing methods, so entangled shearwaters are decreasing. However, with regulatory and environmental changes always at play, there was a desire within the industry to proactively minimize bycatch to the fullest extent possible.
“It’s always better to make best practices for yourself rather than have one handed to you,” said Connors.
A team from CFF – including senior research biologist Liese Siemann, research biologist Natalie Jennings, and research assistants Emily O’Toole, Kelly Alves, and Cassandra Tillotson – collaborated with five Chatham fishermen, as well as Fishermen’s Alliance and federal staff, to develop a pilot project. The first two years had positive results, the third begins this summer.
Caleb Spiegel, of USFWS, is overseeing the project and was a lead presenter at the conference.
He said the workshop was a “unique” moment because this group of people may not assemble again. An objective was to identify mitigation techniques and adapt them on a larger scale. Seabird bycatch, he said, is a systems problem – ecology, gear, economics, policy and behavior wrapped up together.
The symposium was organized by the Trilateral Bycatch Working Group, established in 2022 to deal with severe declines in marine bird populations, and the Atlantic Marine Bird Cooperative, founded in 2005 to coordinate international efforts on marine bird conservation. The workshop focused on bycatch issues in the longline, trawl and gillnet fisheries. Spiegel mentioned high bird mortality that occurs in commercial fisheries worldwide. For example, gillnet fisheries are responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 birds belonging to more than 80 marine bird species. Potential mitigation strategies include hot spot avoidance, reduced soak times, time and area closures, night fishing, and minimum setting depth.
“There is strong demand for proven, gear-specific solutions that reduce bycatch without lowering catch rates,” Spiegel said.
Spiegel emphasized how important it is to create a research project that includes fishermen in the design. That was echoed by many participants throughout the two-day conference.
Our pointed out that in the United States the number of fishermen has undergone a precipitous decline. He has been involved in other gear research where a potential fix was developed without fishermen input. Those failed, he said.
The pilot project benefited from fishermen wanting to proactively solve a problem, which is not universal, Spiegel said.
“We couldn’t have just come in and imposed changes without the fishermen. It wouldn’t have been effective,” he noted.
In CFF’s experiment, fishermen worked with researchers to test methods they had come up with to avoid bycatch in the dogfish fishery. Fishermen experimented with forward-baiting, end-baiting and after-baiting.
After-baiting, where the net was set and then the vessel steamed to the beginning to bait down the length of the net, proved most effective in mitigating bycatch while also improving catch rates.
Connors and Our said the new method was easy to employ, required no additional time or fuel, and the research team from CFF was easy to work with.
“Since we have started, we haven’t caught any (birds),” said Our.
Both captains said word has been quickly spreading throughout the fleet. Those landing at the fish pier saw first-hand the increase in catch after-baiting provided. The fleet communicates and shares what is working. Plus, said Connors, fishermen are trying to increase the marketability of the dogfish, so a steady supply is essential and more is better.
“The dogfish fishery has become very sustainable for Chatham fleet,” said Our, who has been fishing for close to 50 years.
Connors said fishermen land 6,000 lbs a day on 30 gallons of fuel, He would put those numbers up against any other protein, farmed or fished, for a small carbon footprint and big return.
Another case study presented at the workshop involved bird bycatch issues with the herring bait fishery and inshore commercial cod fishery in Newfoundland. Researchers did find that bird bycatch in the herring fishery reduced when fishermen set their gillnets twice in a 24-hour period instead of once and harvested at night. But doubling the trips was likely unfeasible at a large scale because it increased fuel use and fishing effort. Some fishermen are now going earlier in morning, before birds start foraging, and this has helped somewhat.
When the cod fishery in Newfoundland shut down in 1992, seabirds began to rebound. Now that cod populations are back and the fishery is re-opening, many are concerned that 1,500 vessels going for cod will scuttle seabird recovery. Rather than outlawing fishing to protect the birds, Connors said there may be solutions even within large fleets that decrease catch and allow fishermen to maintain their livelihoods.
He suggested scientists meet with fishermen and let them know they are trying to protect their access to the area and ask, ‘How do fishermen propose to eliminate bycatch’?
“I bet they can work it out,” he said.