Quantifying the effects of bycatch reduction devices in Queensland's (Australia) shallow water eastern king prawn (Penaeus plebejus) trawl fishery

Effectiveness of bycatch-reduction devices in roller-frame trawls used in the Florida shrimp fishery

“…Results for our EMF tests were the opposite of those for the FFE; all nets equipped with EMFs significantly reduced finfish bycatch, especially that of the most abundant species. Similar decreases have been observed in tests of other mesh-funnel BRDs (Brewer et al, 1998;Garcia-Caudillo et al, 2000;Courtney et al, 2006). The reduction of finfish bycatch in BRDs equipped with the stimulator cone was more marked than in BRDs equipped with the FFE or EMF alone and included a broad range of finfish species, suggesting that the cone was valuable in reducing bycatch.…”

“…This preferential release of larger fish has been noted previously (Whitaker et al, 1992;Coleman and Koenig, 1998;Garcia-Caudillo et al, 2000;Steele et al, 2002;Warner et al, 2004;Courtney et al, 2006). The FFE and EMF devices were designed to take advantage of behavioral differences between shrimp and finfish (Broadhurst, 2000).…”

“…Some degree of shrimp loss has been noted for this BRD in locations as varied as Florida (Steele et al, 2002), the Gulf of California (Garcia-Caudillo et al, 2000), and Australia (Courtney et al, 2006). However, although Brewer et al (1998) reported significantly diminished shrimp catches from nets equipped with the Australian equivalent of the EMF (radial escape section) during bad weather, they recorded slightly greater catches during good weather, and Rogers et al (1997b) noted low shrimp loss when using an EMF net.…”

The impact of turtle excluder devices and bycatch reduction devices on diverse tropical marine communities in Australia's northern prawn trawl fishery

“…There is evidence from other studies that BRDs are capable of reducing catches of small bycatch, without significant prawn loss (Broadhurst, 2000;Steele et al, 2002;Courtney and Campbell, 2003a,b;Hall and Mainprize, 2005;Courtney et al, 2006). For example, a Square-mesh codend BRD (Brewer et al, 1997) has been trialled successfully in the NPF, reducing small bycatch by 33% without significant prawn loss.…”

“…Examples include the introduction of turtle excluder devices (TEDs) and bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) in prawn and shrimp trawl fisheries in many countries (e.g. Watson et al, 1986;Isaksen et al, 1992;Hall and Mainprize, 2005;Courtney et al, 2006), the use of semipelagic fish trawls to reduce bycatch and minimise impacts on benthic habitats (Brewer et al, 1996), the use of streamer lines and underwater bait-setting devices in pelagic longline fisheries to reduce the catch of seabirds (Melvin et al, 2004), and acoustic devices to reduce dolphin catches in gill nets (Kraus et al, 1997;Kastelein et al, 2000;Bordino et al, 2002).…”