While conducting magnetic experiments in 2006, the company SharkDefense Technologies discovered how certain metal alloys would keep sharks away by affecting the shark’s electric sense.

After extensive testing on several different shark species, SharkDefense Technologies and HEFA Rare Earth Canada, Co. Ltd are now finally ready to put their product on the market: metal alloy thingamajigs that keep sharks away from fishing gear by generating a small voltage as soon as the product is placed in saltwater.

Unlike popular food fishes like tuna and swordfish, sharks are equipped with an electric sense organ and will therefore stay clear of this type of voltage generating alloys. By placing a small piece of metal alloy near the bait at each hook, you cause sharks to shun your fishing equipment like the plague. This is a win-win situation for fishermen and sharks, since the fishermen will able to focus on more expensive target species and the sharks will avoid getting entangled in fishing gear and die.

Continuously submerged in seawater, the metal alloys continue to emit electricity for up to 48 hours.

According to WWF Canada, excessive bycatch* of cod is undermining the cod moratorium imposed in 1994. On the southern Grand Banks near Canada, cod bycatch is now at least 70 percent higher than target levels and this is hampering the recovery of one the world’s best known fisheries.

WWF Canada also states that ships from the European Union are responsible for the largest proportion of the overrun bycatch.

In 2003, bycatch amounts were estimated to be over 80 per cent of the remaining cod stock which caused WWF to push for a 2008 cod recovery strategy that included setting a bycatch reduction target of 40 per cent for the southern Grand Banks at the September 2007 annual meeting of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO).

The 40 percent target level was based on estimations of how much the cod population could endure and still have at least some chance of recovery. 40 percent is equivalent of 420 tonnes of cod, but unofficial fishing statistics for the year 2008 show that almost twice as much, 713 tonnes, was caught as bycatch last year. Of these 713 tonnes, ships from the European Union member states accounted for 444 tonnes.

It should be noted that these figures does not account for misreported bycatch and illegal fishing.

WWF Canada is now urging NAFO to adopt an effective recovery plan for southern Grand Banks cod; one hat will include immediate bycatch reduction targets as well as long-term recovery goals. Gear-based solutions need to be combined with protection of spawning and nursery areas for the plan to be effective and the arrangements must naturally be backed by efficient monitoring and enforcement to have any effect. Such a recovery plan would be consistent with the Ecosystem management approach adopted in the newly revised NAFO Convention.

“Cod and other fish stocks can never recover as long as NAFO refuses to see the urgency of the bycatch problem and acknowledge that voluntary measures are not working,” says Dr. Robert Rangeley, Vice President Atlantic, WWF-Canada. “If NAFO’s Scientific Council starts working on solutions at their June meeting then it will be the responsibility of the Fisheries Commission, in September, to impose strict management measures that will give cod recovery a chance.”

* Bycatch is here defined as unused and unmanaged catch. You can find more information about bycatch in “Defining and Estimating Global Marine Fisheries Bycatch”; a paper co-authored by WWF for the journal Marine Policy. According to this paper, the global bycatch now constitutes over 40 percent of the global reported catch.