I know you don’t spend your night lying awake worrying about the deaths of seabirds via commercial fishing, but hundreds of thousands of them die every year as bycatch. A clever idea and new product that won the World Wildlife Fund’s design contest promises to cut bird mortality by nearly 90 percent, however.

Developed by a Japanese tuna-boat captain named Kazuhiro Yamazaki, the breakthrough is a fishing line that uses a double-weight lead configuration to increase the sinking rate of the gear, which makes it more difficult for foraging seabirds to chase the baited hooks. It was used more than 95,000 times last year and cut bird deaths by 89 percent with no reduction in catch rates or causing injuries to fisherman. The WWF’s Smart Gear contest awarded Yamazaki $30,000 and the International Sustainable Seafood Foundation kicked in another $7,500.

WWF called the positive results “staggering.”

The runners-up were cool, too: Lights attached to gillnets warned turtles away from the nets, reducing turtle mortality by 60 percent with no reduction in fish caught. And the “SeaQualizer” pressure-activated tool releases unintended fish catches at lower depths rather than at the surface, which reduces unwanted deaths.

Environmental coverage made possible in part by support from Patagonia. For information on Patagonia and its environmental efforts, visit www.patagonia.com. Photo by WWF.

Tagged as: environment, ocean, oceans, wildlife