Rex Harrison has changed his fishing gear, from nylon monofilament nets to pigeon netting, to avoid seabird bycatch in his sea trout gillnet fishery.
The 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.
The Issue
In the summer months during the prime fishing season for 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, birds were getting caught in the fishing nets and drowning as they were feeding in the bay.
The Solution
Rex Harrison and his family redesigned 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.
The Process
In 2008, after collecting evidence of bycatch occurring in the fishery, the RSPB requested a voluntary closure during the peak bycatch period at the end of June. Fishermen agreed and the gillnet fishery resumed once the risk of bycatch was lowered.
Dialogue between RSPB and Rex started on how they could work together to implement changes in order to mitigate the number of incidences.
The RSPB, the Environment Agency (the fishery managers) and Natural England have been working together to find measures that minimise seabird deaths, while still allowing the fishery to operate successfully.
In 2010, the Environment Agency, adopted a byelaw which prescribed measures to reduce the number of incidental seabird deaths: special netting which is more visible to birds, no fishing at night, attendance of the nets in the water at all times (so any bird which gets caught can be quickly released) and training on how to quickly and safely release entangled birds.
Rex has been instrumental in encouraging these best practice changes in his fishery and community and operates a sustainable gillnet fishery with greatly reduced bycatch of birds.
“Rory has been involved in the project since day one. Instead of arguing, we just spoke over a cup of coffee about it”
Rex Harrision
"I was taught from my father and grandfather ‘if you don’t look after nature, it won’t look after you.’ It doesn’t get old that saying, it is still true today”
Rex Harrison
"The purpose of fishing is to sustainably exploit a marine resource. The Sea birds were collateral damage rather than intentional to kill. I like to have a grassroots approach which looks at how we can solve this problem”
Rory Crawford, RSPB
“The bottom-up approach is necessary. Local solutions are the ones that work best. With top-down management – we need resourcing done in sensible and strategic way”
