Abstract

How much do you think seafood is worth? Would it surprise you to know that the world’s seafood market was worth over $250 billion in 2021?! And it’s not just money. 3 billion people (over 1/3 of the world’s population) rely on seafood as their main source of protein. 

But the way that we fish is harming marine life. Bycatch, where animals like sharks and turtles are accidentally caught, is a big problem. We urgently need to find solutions!

We wanted to find out whether we could use lights to make gillnet fishing better. Could using illuminated nets reduce the amount of bycatch? 

We found that illuminated gillnets reduced the amount of bycatch. Even better, fishers using the nets still caught lots of the fish that they were targeting and spent less time retrieving the nets. It’s a win-win!

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