© Smart Gear / Steve Beverly
Steve Beverly deploying gear.
How to use Steve Beverly's winning idea
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Deep-Setting Technique for Reducing Longline Bycatch of Sea Turtles
Steve Beverly, fisheries development officer, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), New Caledonia
Mr. Beverly is a longtime fisherman who has worked as a longline tuna fisherman, spiny lobster fisherman, commercial diver and tugboat operator in Hawaii; done exploratory fishing for bottom fish and crayfish in Australia, New Zealand and the Pitcairn Islands; fished as a commercial longline fisherman Fiji and Guam; and was a master fisherman for SPC in New Caledonia.His work at SPC has included several fish aggregating devices (FAD) projects and a two-year tuna longline project in East New Britain, Papua New Guinea as well as several FAD workshops, and fish-handling workshops. Beverly became a full-time fisheries development officer with SPC in March 1996.
Winning idea
Mr. Beverly's entry was specifically tailored to address the problem of sea turtle bycatch in longline tuna fisheries in the Pacific Island countries. For many Pacific Island communities, tuna fishing is the only significant option for economic growth and, of all the commercial tuna fishing methods, longlining has proved to be the cheapest and most effective for local fishermen.
Longline fishing gear consists of baited hooks hanging from a long drifting line that is suspended from buoys that rest on the surface of the water. Occasionally, instead of catching tuna (the target species), the hooks may snag sea turtles (a non-target species, or bycatch).
Fisheries logbook data and studies of sea turtle behavior indicate that sea turtles swim in shallow waters and usually get tangled in or hooked by longlines at depths of 100 meters or less. Tunas swim at much lower depths. Mr. Beverly's idea is to set longlines with baited hooks at a predetermined depth that is deeper than 100 meters (328 feet) which allows longline fishermen to minimize encounters with sea turtles while maximizing their tuna catch.
While most boats fishing for tuna already set their lines deep, normal setting practices, even when setting deep, leave a good portion of the baited hooks in shallow water where they are likely to snare a swimming sea turtle.
Normally, the mainline is suspended between two floats and sags in a curve with the baited hooks floating at a variety of depths ranging from very near the surface and within sea turtle range down to 300 meters or more.
In Mr. Beverly's design the mainline is weighted with lead weights and released or "set" in such a way that the section of mainline, which holds twenty to forty baited hooks, goes down to and remains below 100 meters which is safely out of sea turtle range yet within target species range. Successful testing of this idea has been carried out by three vessels fishing for tuna in Pacific waters. One of these vessels caught 42 percent more tuna using Mr. Beverly's gear.
