This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: When fishers are out working their boats, they are typically targeting a specific type of fish. However, other species often end up in their nets or trawls as well.
This is known as "bycatch"—seafood for which the fishers receive no payment. Although it is illegal to discard bycatch back into the sea, it still happens. "Fishers often find themselves caught between the need to operate sustainably and the desire for economic gain.
Many fishing vessels have limited space on board, as well as limited resources to handle bycatch in the best possible way," says Line Skontorp Meidell. Meidell is a researcher at SINTEF Ocean. She has participated in the Bifangst (By-catch) project, which has explored ways to utilize bycatch more sustainably.
In a world that is more unstable than it has been for a long time, food security and self-sufficiency are high on the agenda. Making use of bycatch could amount to around 8 million meals every year, or about 1.4 meals per inhabitant in Norway. Researchers are currently working to increase children's understanding of bycatch through the Luring dissemination project.
To this end, they participated in an "Ocean Day" (Havdagen), hosted by the Trondheim Science Center. Many adults and children were surprised by the high bycatch numbers—a fact they learned while peering into boxes containing bycatch that one of the city's local fishers provided. On display were rabbitfish (chimera), spiny dogfish and long rough dab—all of which many folks consider quite tasty.
While most people agreed that we shouldn't be discarding so much fish, they hesitated when asked if they would personally eat the specific types of fish they were looking at. What many people don't realize is that fish filets from the vast majority of species look a lot alike. "When we showed them pictures of filets from long rough dab and hagfish, several people changed their minds and said they would actually be willing to eat those specific species," says Meidell.
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