Addressing marine animal entanglement issues through awareness and disentanglement training workshops for fishermen in Scotland
The Issue
Marine animal entanglements in fishing gear and marine debris can cause injury, impairment and death.
In Scottish waters the species most vulnerable to entanglement include minke whales; humpback whales; basking sharks and leatherback turtles. Whales, dolphins and porpoises come under “strict protection” in Scottish law.
An at-sea survey found 22% of live minke whales observed on the west coast of Scotland showed evidence of an injury caused by an entanglement.
The Solution
The Scottish Entanglement Alliance (SEA) sets out to gather information on the extent and impact of marine animal entanglement, improve reporting rates and provide a platform for fishermen to suggest solutions for disentanglement.
Throughout the project they created opportunities for fishermen to become involved in entanglement research and disentanglement efforts via workshops and training courses.
This included a weekend disentanglement training course, attended by 22 fishermen and a specialist trainer from the USA.
The Process
The fishing industry highlighted that entanglement of a wide range of species was a problem in Scottish waters.
The information from industry was backed up by notices and research from the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS), which saw there had been a rise in entanglement cases in recent years, from four in 2014 to eighteen in 2018 and fifteen in 2019
Phase one of the SEA project was to establish whether entanglement was an issue, through speaking to fishermen along the coastline and gathering evidence.
The SEA’s goal is to work closely with the Scottish inshore fishing industry to better understand the impacts of marine animal entanglements and to develop sustainable, proportional mitigation strategies and show the fishermen are competent and capable of conservation
The SEA encourages fishermen to report entanglement in fishing gears, so they can offer advice and assistance
The SEA weekend disentanglement training course was held and those who attended were equipped to untangle marine mammals. Ambitions to expand the programme were stopped because of the pandemic.
Scotland has two long term monitoring programmes to understand levels of bycatch and entanglements in Scottish and UK fleet. There is an on-board bycatch observer programme that is led by St Andrews University, and a strandings analysis programme that is led by the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS). Both are funded by the Scottish and UK governments.
The data collected within these programmes is essential to understand the extent of entanglement. It is important to work in collaboration with fishermen to understand the issue fully and to work together to identify and recommend ways to reduce entanglements
Phase two of the SEA project will cover mitigation measures. The fishing industry are interested and engaged on how this could work, but the SEA Alliance is waiting on funding to be able to kick this off.
“By reporting such an event you are not incriminating yourself or your fishery but rather you are contributing to important research to help us understand the entanglement issue. Any information you share will be treated sensitively, positively and confidentially.”
