Understanding the scale, impact and potential mitigation of marine animal entanglement in the Scottish static gear fishery

Marine animal entanglement in fishing gear is a serious concern, considered by the International Whaling Commission to be the most significant marine mammal welfare issue of our time. In Scottish waters entanglement in fishing gear (static creel gear in particular) is the largest identified cause of non-natural mortality in baleen whales, and based on data collected by the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS) over the past 20 years, the incidence, rate and range of species impacted are increasing. Entanglements have conservation, welfare, economic, political and human safety implications, but a thorough scientific understanding of impact is data deficient due to underreporting of events by fishermen and the low likelihood of carcases making landfall or being retrievable for post-mortem examination.

The Scottish inshore creel fishery makes an important economic, social and cultural contribution to many fragile Scottish coastal communities, employing ~2,400 fishers (~3,300 across the value chain) and generating a total value to the Scottish economy of ~£102m per year. Creels are widely considered to be a very selective and environmentally benign method of fishing, conducted by small (<10m) vessels with minimal bycatch or impact on the seabed. However currently there is no limit on the number of creels deployed in Scottish waters and scant data on the number in use, but industry consensus is that creel numbers have increased dramatically over the last decade. Therefore with thousands of miles of associated rope deployed in the water at any given time, entanglements can, and do, occur.

There are still many important knowledge gaps in entanglement research in Scotland. For example, the association between creel fishing effort and the incidence, seasonality, severity or outcome of marine animal entanglements is unknown. Little information is available on the amount of active or derelict fishing gear or the amount of associated rope, gear redundancy or rates of gear loss. Current legislation regarding monitoring is considered by key stakeholders to be lacking (e.g. Regulation 812/2004) and with the development of the Scottish-led UK Dolphin and Porpoise Conservation Strategy and four proposed Marine Protected Areas for mobile species currently under consultation, further research to better understand and mitigate marine animal entanglements is timely.

This project will build on work completed through the Scottish Inshore Fisheries Integrated Data System (SIFIDS) project and the Scottish Entanglement Alliance (SEA) project. It will take a transdisciplinary approach, combining emerging technological capacity in data collection from Scotland's inshore fisheries, with behavioural science methodologies into fisher's attitudes and motivations, in order to understand and mitigate the incidence of marine animal entanglements in Scotland. Preliminary work modelling fisher's decision making with respect to the choice "not to fish" (SIFIDS) showed that understanding behavioural and attitudinal factors was informative for understanding effort, and key to future decision support tools for policy makers, regulators and industry. Therefore quantitative evidence to underpin our understanding of the impacts of, and risk factors for, marine animal entanglement in static fishing gears, and behaviourally-informed, evidence-based intervention to promote fishers' reporting of entanglement events will be gathered and combined to offer novel and potentially very effective approach to fisheries co-management to minimise the negative consequences of marine entanglement in Scottish waters. Key to this is meaningful engagement with fishers, whose expertise and understanding of the environment in which they work is essential to shape workable mitigation measures.