Fishermen in Maine are experimenting with a new kind of trawl net that catches ample flatfish like flounder and sole, but leaves the plummeting cod population alone, says NPR.
New Englanders once claimed they could walk across the water on the backs of cod, because they were so plentiful. But the fish is now struggling after decades of overfishing and rising water temperatures. Fishermen who catch them accidentally as bycatch are dinged by a quota manager.
“Say tomorrow I go out, have a 10,000 set of cod and I only have 4,000 pounds of quota, essentially your sector manager — the person that oversees this — would shut me down,” says Jim Ford, whose trawler docks in Newburyport, Mass. Ford teamed with a netmaker and scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) to create a new net that opens closer to the seafloor and below the swimming range of cod.
“We were able to avoid around half the cod, compared to a traditional net, and still retain the flatfish. And so for fishermen who are still being profitable, they are still maintaining their flatfish. They weren’t losing any,” says Steve Eayrs, the GMRI scientist who directed the project. The new net also appears to produce less drag, saving on fuel.
Eayrs says GMRI will offer a few fishermen a chance to try the updated net for free, since nets can run upwards of $10,000.