Cliff Goudey's version of the better mousetrap is the better scallop dredge.

A major challenge for fisheries worldwide is to reduce their impact on non-target or bycatch species.

According to one of the authors of a paper on the findings in the August edition of Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, CSIRO scientist Dr Chris Wilcox, a major challenge for fisheries worldwide is to reduce their impact on ‘bycatch’ species such as seabirds.

Fishing industry lines accidentally catch so many seabirds and turtles that their populations are being threatened. One solution offered by a Cornell researcher and an Australian government scientist is to assess fines when threatened species are caught and killed.

For Peru fishing is a prime source of foreign exchange, second only to mining. The country's anchovy fishing fleet, which seeks the Peruvian anchovy Engraulis ringens, is the world's largest single-species fishery, with an average of 8% of global landings.

Recent test fishing of a halibut excluder device on trawl nets fishing for Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska points to a significant reduction of halibut bycatch. The test fishery was coordinated by the cooperative research program of the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation (MCAF) in conjunction with Dr. Craig Rose of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fishery Science Center and the help of Kodiak
fishermen.

The European Union's fisheries chief announced Wednesday proposals to curtail "discards," the wasteful practice of throwing good fish overboard because of commercial expediency or legal constraints.