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The brothers from Devon who want to save dolphins and whales from painful deaths

Author: Charlotte England / Source: Positive News

Some 300,000 dolphins, porpoises and whales are caught in fishing nets and lines each year. This marine conservation technology business is looking to raise £900,000 of new investment through equity crowdfunding to make fishing more sustainable

Brands of Inspiration content: this article has been created by Positive News and supported by Triodos Bank

Every year hundreds of thousands of marine creatures drown after becoming tangled in fishing lines and nets.

Known in the industry as bycatch, the accidental death of dolphins, whales, turtles, seabirds and sharks is one of the most troubling side effects of commercial fishing. Technology to prevent bycatch is limited, and the devices that are available to fishermen can be expensive and cumbersome. A small business in Devon hopes to change this.

Fisheries biologist Pete Kibel was feeling “pretty appalled by the state of our oceans” when, after 25 years in the industry, he set up Fishtek Marine with his brother Ben, an environmental engineer. They launched the company in 2016 in order to pioneer new marine conservation technology. After rapid growth over the last two years, Fishtek is now crowdfunding via ethical bank Triodos in order to raise £900,000 of new investment to expand the reach of its products and to invest in developing new ones that could have even more of a positive conservation impact.

Speaking from Fishtek’s base in Totnes, Kibel describes bycatch as “one of the biggest threats to a number of iconic species”. At least 300,000 dolphins, porpoises and whales, 300,000 seabirds and 250,000 turtles are killed this way each year, he says. Some marine species are now in such a precarious position they could face extinction unless things change quickly.

“It’s positive that bycatch is starting to shift up the agenda,” he says, explaining that much legislation has been introduced, announced or strengthened in recent years – “but it’s way too slow”.

It’s positive that bycatch is starting to shift up the agenda but it’s way too slow

A major obstacle has been the quality of many of the products on the market to date. For instance, the ‘pinger’ – a device that can reduce the number of dolphins, whales and porpoises caught in nets by up to 95 per cent – has existed for decades, but most on sale were poor quality and overpriced, according to Kibel.

When new legislation was mooted, some fishermen were less than keen to embrace it. “They said ‘how can we be forced to use something that is too expensive; that breaks; that we have to throw away after a year?’” Kibel says. “We felt that if we really want to achieve a good conservation outcome, we needed to develop a product that’s fit for purpose.”

So the brothers set to work, developing pingers that are designed to be both durable and affordable. The devices are designed to be fitted to gill nets – large, fine-weave fishing nets that are weighted at the bottom and floated at the top so they sit suspended above the seabed.