Purina Europe's support for global bycatch mitigation

Once that decision was made, the next step was to find effective bycatch-mitigation projects and pledge Purina’s support to them. So the company asked SFP to help figure out where promising solutions were being implemented and how to connect to them. This conversation led to the joint realization that it would be very useful to have a global hub that consolidated bycatch-mitigation projects from around the world and connected them to the seafood industry. 

And thus the Bycatch Solutions Hub was born.

One of the biggest barriers to protecting endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) species from being killed as bycatch in commercial fisheries is fragmented information. Companies want to help fix the problem, but they don’t know how or where to go to find solutions. 

With generous founding sponsorship from Purina Europe, SFP developed the Bycatch Solutions Hub to bridge the gap between innovation and action, by matching retailers and businesses that want to financially support projects to reduce bycatch with organizations capable of implementing in-the-water solutions.

In the years since the Hub was established, Purina has also sponsored or co-sponsored several specific bycatch-reduction projects that were developed and shared through the platform. These include:

• Dolphin and porpoise bycatch reduction in the Norwegian North Atlantic cod and monkfish fishery: A project that is providing Norwegian gillnet fishers with free acoustic pingers, which have been shown to keep marine mammals away from fishing nets.
• Non-entangling biodegradable fish aggregating devices (FADs) in the tuna purse seine fishery: Support for the development of “jelly FADs,” which are made of organic materials instead of plastic and break down quickly, reducing the risk of entanglement of non-target species. The project is also offering workshops to participating vessels, which will then monitor the performance of the jelly FADs at sea.
• Global whale entanglement response: Support for the International Whaling Commission’s Global Whale Entanglement Response Network, which has developed best practice guidelines and entanglement response workshops, and distributes disentanglement equipment kits, across five continents.
• Modified purse seines to reduce seabird bycatch in a Chilean reduction fishery: Support for gear modification on artisanal vessels in south-central Chile to make the switch to modified nets that reduce seabird bycatch, as well as training workshops for captains and crew.