Protected species bycatch media 2017/18

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MIT2016-01: Protected Species Bycatch Media Report (PDF, 1,282K)

Summary

Fishers must maintain and apply their knowledge of bycatch avoidance and reduction measures relevant to their fishing method, to ensure that captures of marine protected species are minimised. Maintaining up-to-date knowledge may be challenging, when the management of marine protected species occurs in a dynamic context that involves ongoing developments in legislation, government policies, science, research, and management approaches. With their activities based from ports around the country, fishers themselves may be somewhat distant from the decisions and processes that affect management of the environment in which they fish. Therefore, the challenge and process of communicating new developments relevant to reducing marine protected species bycatch with fishers is an ongoing one.

To help address that challenge, the objectives of Conservation Services Programme (CSP) project MIT2016-01 were:

• To produce a newsletter to communicate protected species-related information to commercial fishers,
• To produce media suitable for incorporation into third party publications in order to maximise audience exposure, and,
• To develop and produce ID tools targeted at commercial fishers to improve their understanding of protected species interacting with their fishing operations. This report summarises activities undertaken, and outputs produced, to meet the above objectives. It also provides recomm-endations for further work to address the ongoing challenge of communicating protected species bycatch issues.

Publication information

Pierre, J. 2018. Protected Species Bycatch Media. Final Report prepared by JPEC for the Conservation Services Programme, Department of Conservation, Wellington. 22 p.