populations, then a good shrimp 

 season should be followed by poor 

 catches of fall finfish, he concludes. 



But he says that's not the case. 



Carroll Yeomans of Vandemere 

 concurs. 



After more than 32 years of shrimp- 

 ing, Yeomans says bycatch is cyclical. 

 "Some years, you could hardly work 

 for the bycatch," he says. "The next 

 year you wouldn't catch any." 



And Willis and Schill say bycatch 

 shouldn't become a scapegoat for fish 

 and shellfish declines. Factors such as 

 poor water quality and habitat degra- 

 dation should figure into declines too. 



"It's always easier to point a finger at 

 the commercial fishing industry," Schill 

 says. 



"A recreational fisherman doesn't 

 catch his normal amount of flounder or 

 speckled trout, and he looks up from 

 his boat and sees a trawler in the dis- 

 tance," he says. "He immediately 

 assumes the problem is that damn 

 trawler or net. He doesn't stop to think 

 about habitat degradation and water 

 quality degradation." 



But Schill concedes that bycatch is a 

 problem facing the commercial fishing 



Clinton Willis 



industry, shrimpers in particular, be- 

 cause the public perceives it as one. 



"We owe it to the resource and to 

 the health of our own industry to ad- 

 dress the problem," Schill says. 



Already the bycatch of red snapper 

 by Gulf shrimpers has flamed a debate 

 between commercial and sport fisher- 

 men that is heated and volatile. 



Fresh from the fight against the use 

 of turtle excluder devices (TEDs), com- 

 mercial fishermen are leery of govern- 

 ment intervention and forced regulations 

 on bycatch. 



Willis says watermen can take care 



of the problem without regulation. 

 When bycatch is thick, fishermen move 

 to another trawling location or cut a 

 hole in the tailbag of their net to 

 release the bycatch. 



But Schill believes fishermen should 

 work with Sea Grant and the N.C. Divi- 

 sion of Marine Fisheries to develop 

 bycatch separation devices and solve 

 the problem on a local level. 



"We need to work with the manage- 

 ment people— the federal agencies, 

 the state fisheries managers, the 

 bureaucrats— to work out this prob- 

 lem," Schill says. "If we don't work it 

 out adequately, it will go to Washington. 

 We don't need this issue there, and it 

 shouldn't be there. 



"Those folks have no idea what goes 

 on out here on the water," he says. "So 

 we need to take the bull by the horns 

 and solve this among ourselves." 



Yeomans and Willis think fishermen 

 would be willing to give a finfish sep- 

 arator device a try. 



"If someone comes up with a way to 

 get rid of bycatch, I think fishermen 

 would use it as long as it didn't kill the 

 industry by reducing shrimp catch too," 

 Yeomans says. 



Sea Grant Test Trawls Reduce Bycatch 



BY C. R. EDGERTON 



North Carolina Sea Grant is catching 

 up with bycatch. 



The fisheries issue of the 1990s is 

 being probed, tested and evaluated by 

 a team of Sea Grant researchers who 

 say they've made big strides toward 

 reducing the number of juvenile finfish 

 caught in shrimp nets. 



That's good news for environmen- 

 talists and recreational fishermen con- 

 cerned with reduced fisheries. And it's 

 encouraging to shrimpers who don't 

 look favorably on the time and effort it 

 takes to cull finfish and other marine 

 creatures from their shrimp catch. 



The best news of all is that Sea 

 Grant's recent testing of finfish separat- 

 ing devices (FSDs) showed no signifi- 

 cant loss in the numbers of shrimp 

 harvested. 



"Our results are preliminary, but 

 we're pleased with what we've found 

 out so far," says Jim Murray, Sea Grant's 

 Marine Advisory Service director and 

 principal investigator in the bycatch 

 project. 



"We've tested three basic net designs, 

 and in most cases, those nets have 

 shown a significant decrease in finfish 

 without a noticeable loss of shrimp," 

 Murray says. "The results have been 

 good." 



Murray emphasizes that Sea Grant's 

 research, which is being funded by the 

 National Marine Fisheries Services and 

 the National Undersea Research Cen- 

 ter, is still in its infancy. But, he says, 

 "We know that FSDs work, they reduce 

 bycatch." 



And B.J. Copeland, director of UNC 

 Sea Grant, says the project is pro- 

 viding early answers to an issue that's 

 just simmering now, but could boil over 

 soon. 



"We recognized the importance of 

 the issue early on. We've done the 

 research and have applied it prac- 

 tically under true-to-life conditions," 

 says Copeland. 



