Rex Harrison has changed his fishing gear, from nylon monofilament nets to pigeon netting, to avoid seabird bycatch in his sea trout gillnet fishery.
Rex Harrison is a fisherman from the last fishing family in Filey Bay. The 100-year-old sea trout fishery operates in small under 10m boats and J-shaped gillnets which extend from the sea surface down to the seabed.
In the summer months during the prime fishing season for the sea trout, the area from Bempton Cliffs to Filey Bay also becomes the home to thousands of breeding seabirds such as guillemots, gannets, razorbills, puffins and kittiwakes. During the overlap of these seasons, approximately 700 birds were getting caught in the fishing nets and drowning as they were feeding in the bay.
Rex Harrison and his family were innovative in redesigning and implementing changes to their gillnets which has reduced the bird catch down to single figures per season and other species’ by-catch down to zero.
The net was a monofilament nylon gillnet, which is almost invisible to fish and the seabirds. Rex trialled 2-3 different kinds of nets and now he uses the black pigeon netting you see on roofs. The netting is cheap, lasts a long time and is easy to fix and disentangle bycatch from.