Evening Echo, Tuesday, August 28, 2018 Life 25

amount of damage done to the catchby seals or the total number of fishcaught.

This is especially encouraging asmaking nets more visible mightallow us to reduce the number ofseals being drowned while notexacerbating the problem of sealsstealing fish and not reducing fishingsuccess, although this must first betested at sea.

I believe this study is a shiningexample of the progress scientistscan make by working with fishersand tapping into their expert knowl-edge.

Ult imately , I hope that thisresearch will allow us to take a morepro-active than reactive approach tofisheries management, and ensurethat fisheries and seals co-existsustainably and long into the future.

They are so good at this, in fact,that there have been records of blindseals living and feeding quite hap-pily.

That being said, the disturbance inthe water generated by an activelyswimming fish is much greater thanthat made by a static net. So ourtheory of seals not being able todetect the net in murky water holdsup.

Now, you might rightly be think-ing, “So what?” Well, this is actuallyquite encouraging.

Researchers in the US have hadsuccess at reducing sea turtle byc-atch by making nets more visible.This could be done by adding LEDlights or high contrast black andwhite panels to the nets.

In my analysis, I found no linkbetween water clarity and the

as earth observation data) we can tella lot about what’s going on in thelocal environment. By comparing myfishing data to satellite images ofocean colour, I found that seals weremost likely to be caught when thewater was murkiest, and least likelyto be caught when the water wasclear.

Now, seals are pretty good at whatthey do. They don’t just rely on eye-sight underwater but can actuallyfind food by using their whiskers tofollow the turbulence generated by aswimming fish.

Maybe the answer was as simple asthat. Maybe, when the water wasmurky, seals couldn’t see the nets,and were more likely to swim intothem accidentally.

Certainly, this might explain thewinter peak in bycatch, as any scubadiver can tell you, the underwatervisibility typically worsens dramati-cally in winter. However, the nextchallenge was how to prove it.

Satellite imagery has come a longway in the last few years and bystudying satellite images of theearth’s surface (generally referred to

AS an island nation on the edgeof Europe, fishing has longplayed an important role inour national identity.

Today the fishing industry is asimportant as ever. The Irish fishingfleet of around 2,000 vessels landmore than €300 million worth of fishper year, and the industry as a wholeemploys thousands of people aroundthe beautiful coast of Ireland.

The waters off Ireland contain adiverse and complex marine eco-system, ranging from microscopicphytoplankton to titanic humpbackwhales.

Seal populations, as top marinepredators, which rely on the entiretyof the food web beneath them, canprovide us with a snapshot of the eco-system health.

Ireland is home to two species ofseals, the grey seals and the harbourseals, which are protected by the EUHabitats Directive and attract largenumbers of tourists each year.

Unfortunately, seals and fisheriesdon’t always make for happy neigh-bours. Seals aren’t above a free mealand have been known to help them-selves to fish caught in commercialnets.

This can amount to considerablelosses for the fishers, as significantnumbers of fish can be removed froma net or damaged beyond a level atwhich they can be sold.

One need only imagine hauling ina net full of fish heads to understandthe frustration of fishers.

While this is obviously bad newsfor the fishers, what is even worsenews for the seals is that they canbecome caught in the nets them-selves and drown.

This accidental catch (known asbycatch) of seals is a global issuewhich leads to thousands of sealsbecoming caught in nets around theworld.

This issue pops up most often in‘static’ nets which are typically left inthe water for a day, a week, or longer.

Scientists have previously tried totackle this problem by usingunderwater loudspeakers to deterseals from nets and fish farms or bymodifying nets with escape hatchesfor the seals, but these ‘fixes’ areusually specif ic to a particularfishery or part of the world, and areunlikely to work everywhere.

In order to discover new methodsof reducing seal bycatch, we mustfirst understand why seals becomecaught in the first place. My researchaims to answer this question.

To do this, I first went fishing. Ispent a number of days at sea, onboard a small fishing vessel in south-west Ireland, collecting data on whenand where seals were being caught.

This was no small task as I lovebeing at sea but have terrible sealegs, so I lost my breakfast, lunch,and dinner most days.

Then I combined my research withdata collected from other observersand fishers around the country.

When I first started going throughthis data, something jumped outimmediately. Even though most ofthe fishing was happening in thesummer months, almost all of theseals were becoming caught inwinter.

I was racking my brain, trying tothink what could be behind thispattern, when I mentioned it to alocal fisher who seemed entirelyunsurprised. “I never catch sealswhen the water is clear,” he told me.

We live in a world of incredibly fast-moving science, where information and knowledgeare constantly pushing back the boundaries. And you don’t have to go far to see this

science in action — hundreds of UCC students are carrying out vital work on a daily basis.In this new series, A Closer Look At Science, every Tuesday we will highlight the work ofthe finalists in the UCC Science For All competition held earlier this year, which aims toexplain often complex work in a manner that can be easily understood. This week, work

that could help save seals from getting caught up in fishing nets

THREAT: The grey seal, one of twospecies found off Ireland’s shores

By Cian Luck, School of Biological, Earth andEnvironmental Sciences and Centre for Marineand Renewable Energy Ireland (MaREI), UCC

Research that willaid fishing industryand save seals too