Environment, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT: Mesh Nets Push Many Whales, Dolphins to Extinction

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 9 2005 (IPS) - Nine species of dolphins and porpoises living in coastal waters from Argentina to Zanzibar could become extinct within just a few decades unless urgent action is taken to sharply reduce their deaths as a result of gillnet fishing, according to a new report released here Thursday by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

"On the Brink: Global Priorities for Saving Dolphins and Porpoises Threatened by Bycatch" identifies the most threatened populations as a guide to international and national policymakers, including the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is meeting next week in South Korea.

"Almost 1,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die every day in nets and fishing gear, and some species are being pushed to the brink of extinction," according to Karen Baragona of WWF’s species conservation programme. "We developed this ranking to help governments and aid agencies target their investments for the best return."

The report’s release also coincides with the introduction by California Sen. Barbara Boxer of a legislative initiative to establish a five-million-dollar-a-year fund to help reduce the accidental deaths of marine mammals and sea turtles in fishing gear around the world.

"We’re urging Congress to pas this oceans legislation and to use this list to help best target funding to the places where it could make the most difference for dolphins and porpoises," said Baragona. "These accidental deaths can be significantly reduced, often with very simple, low-cost solutions."

Indeed, between 1993 and 2003, fisheries in the U.S. introduced changes that reduced the death toll of cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – from gillnet fishing by two-thirds. Thus far, however, the technology that made those reductions possible has not been introduced in many other parts of the world, particularly in poor regions.

More than 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises are accidentally killed each year as a result of becoming entangled or trapped in fishing gillnets below the water’s surface.

Gillnets are mesh nets that allow fish to pass their heads and gill coverings through a hole in the mesh and then get stuck on their gill coverings when they try to back out. When a gillnet is "set," the bottom is weighted to the sea floor by weights while the top is held up by floats, thus creating a "wall" of net from sea bottom to surface.

But dolphins and other larger cetaceans find it difficult to see the nets or detect them with echolocation, so they may become entangled in the nets while swimming or feeding. Unable to reach the surface to breathe, they suffocate.

Modifying fishing gear – such as by using glowing ropes or stiffer nets – have been shown to substantially reduce the dangers.

To compile the new study, a working group of the world’s leading dolphin and porpoise scientists was asked to rank those species that were both most threatened by gillnet fishing and most likely to recover rapidly from targeted interventions. The aim was to prioritise global efforts to save the species.

The group identified nine species that should be top priorities for intervention. At the top of the list were some 500 Irrawaddy dolphins threatened not only by gillnets in rivers and lakes of Southeast Asia, but also by crab nets in the Malampaya Sound in the Philippines.

Gillnets also threaten some 230 Indo-Pacific humpback and bottlenose dolphins found off the southern coast of Zanzibar were threatened by gillnetting; an unknown population of harbor porpoises in the Black Sea; Spinner and Fraser’s dolphins in the Philippines; Atlantic humpback dolphins off the coasts of Ghana and Togo in Gulf of Guinea; Burmeister’s porpoises in Peru; Franciscana dolphins off of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, and Commerson’s dolphins off of Argentina.

The study stresses that a range of measures can be taken in each case to reduce the bycatch problem.

In the case of the Irrawaddy dolphin, for example, fishermen have been encouraged to use sound deterrents, such as striking two iron bars together underwater, to warn off cetaceans, to tend nets more frequently, and to create protected areasa where gillnets are banned.

In other cases, such as in Zanzibar which outlawed the hunting of both dolphin species in 1996, local hunters have invested in whale-watching tourism and more targeted fishing. The study suggested that tourism was also a promising alternative in West Africa.

In some cases, laws and regulations that could protect cetaceans are on the books, but enforcement is either non-existent or lagging behind. In such cases, international donors should invest in building up conservation agencies, according to the report.