Research Survey on Overfishing (Open to All Divers!)

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

New Zealand has a quota system where the catch quota is divided amongst recreational and commercial fishing. The quota for each species is adjusted by the government depending on the sustainability of the catch for that particular species.

The system is not perfect but better than nothing. Besides obvious cheating by both recreational and commercial fishermen, some of the commercial guys have to throw back catch not on their quota or voluntarily throw back lower value catch in order to maximize profits. That catch rarely survives and is wasted. There is some changes on the way to help prevent that (cameras on boats, law changes, etc.).

Our company has been working with the The Nature Conservancy group in Indonesia to help teach the local fishermen to identify juvenile species on sonar before they catch/kill them. The idea being to keep them from wiping out their own future as has happened in numerous other places in the world.. We developed and manufacture sonar data loggers that log all the sonar activity and location/date/time on board fishing boats for weeks at a time. On-board cameras or voluntary date/time stamped photos then allow the scientist at TNC to correlate the catch with what the sonar was seeing at the time. Hopefully this will work.
 
The survey is closed now.
 
Old thread I know but I came across a blog about sustainable fishing practices in Alaska. They seem to have decent regulations up there. Blog Here
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom