15 November, 2007

A NEW device which could cut the number of harbour porpoises and other cetaceans caught in fishing nets has won the UK prize in the International Smart Gear Competition, organised by wildlife campaigners WWF.

Andy Smerdon, of Aquatec Group Ltd, won the $5000 award for his ‘Passive Porpoise Deterrent’, an idea which draws on the harbour porpoise’s echolocation system to protect the mammal from getting caught up in fishing nets.

The PPD alerts porpoises to the presence of fishing nets using resonant acoustic reflectors that increase the net’s “acoustic visibility”, and do so in a less complicated way than the currently used pingers.

When a porpoise emits a click, the reflectors transmit back a stronger echo, making the reflectors appear to the porpoise to be much larger objects than they are, and thus alerting them to danger.

Mr Smerdon said the award will help him kick start field trials of the device.

The Smart Gear Grand Prize went to a team of US Rhode Island inventors for a device aptly named “The Eliminator” which captures haddock while reducing the accidental netting of other marine species.

Their invention beat 70 entries from 22 countries to win the top prize. It works by taking advantage of the haddock’s natural tendency to swim upwards, not downwards which is the norm for other fish.

Another Briton, Mike Sharpe from Devon , was given an honorary mention for his environmental beam trawl which applies square mesh panels to beam trawlers to reduce bycatch of invertebrates, fish, and benthos.