Hooking fish, not endangered turtles

A tuna fisherman has tahimself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals ken it upon that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait and the lethal barb that secures it unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.  He’s created a large round shield that crews snap over a fairly standard baited hook. A typical longline deployed by tuna fleets might run up to 150 kilometers. A single line may carry from 1,000 to 3,000 barbed hooks one spaced every 50 meters or so. “Tuna longline fishing sets over 2 billion of these hooks globally each year,” Jusseit says. “We’ve shown in tests on longline boats in Australia that fishermen catch more fish using this hook,” Jusseit reports. One reason: Seabirds and turtles typically abscond with up to 15 percent of the bait. The heavy new guards also will substitute for pricy sinkers used to initially pull the hooks down to the target depths, he says.