Two innovative ropeless fishing systems will be trialled in the NSW Ocean Trap & Line fishery during the 2024 humpback whale migration season to help assess the practicality of such gear to help mitigate fishery interactions with whales.
Previous NSW gear trials indicated that galvanic time-release submerged headgear is impractical for use in specific areas (e.g. offshore rocky reefs) of the fishery. The 2024 trials will test two new systems: LiftLabs LLC and Ashored. Both technologies allow fishers to acoustically release submerged gear from their boats and offer range finding capabilities to better locate their ascending gear.
LiftLabs uses an acoustically inflated liftbag attached to a trap to bring it to the sea surface without ropes, while Ashored uses an additional cage which contains a fisher’s ropes/buoys to attach alongside or atop a trap. These devices have shown promise in North American fisheries in helping prevent fishery interactions with North Atlantic Right Whales.
Gear trials are officially underway! Throughout the 2024 whale migration season, trial participants will be implementing these systems into their daily fishing operations to assess the overall potential of the systems for NSW demersal trap fisheries. By testing the gear in different conditions, depths, habitats, and gear configurations, it will help identify any limitations the gear may have and whether either system could prove as a potential option to help reduce whale entanglement risk and lost/ghost gear from shipping cut-offs.
Stay tuned for more updates as trials progress!
The Helping Fishers and Humpback Whales Coexist project is supported through grant funding from the Australian Government.
East Coast Whale Entanglement Mitigation
The East Coast Whale Entanglement Mitigation Program has been initiated in NSW to respond to the issue of entanglement with NSW set fishing gear.
2023 Ropeless
Consortium
OceanWatch was awarded an educational travel bursary from FRDC to attend the 2023 Ropeless Consortium in Nova Scotia, Canada with five trap fisher representatives.