Fishing

​Threatened and endangered albatrosses in the South Atlantic are getting a break as BAS seabird ecologist Richard Phillips puts newly developed radar-detecting tags on the seabirds. The tags show when and where the birds are scanned by ship navigation radar.

As any recreational angler will know, fish can be a finicky bunch – so when you DO catch one, it's good to keep a record of the location and conditions which allowed that to happen. Cyberfishing's new Smart Rod Sensor is designed to help you do that.

So-called "ghost" fishing nets are awful things. Lost or forgotten during commercial fishing operations, they can drift in the ocean for years, indiscriminately catching marine life as they do. A newly-invented tag, however, may help keep that from happening.

​According to the University of Exeter, an estimated 400,000 diving seabirds die annually by getting caught in gill nets intended to catch fish. A new study indicates that the majority of those deaths could be avoided, however, if the nets were to be equipped with inexpensive green LEDs.

​Longline fisheries may catch a lot of fish, but they also catch seabirds such as albatross. Several years ago, a group of conservationists began work on a product designed to keep the birds from getting caught. It's known as the Hookpod, and a recent study has concluded that it really works.

A study from UCLA suggests that if fish farming can be moved offshore, then an area of sea the size of Lake Michigan (0.025 percent of the ocean's surface), could meet the global demand for fish and allow wild stock to recover.

Easter Island is known for two things: giant stone heads and the cautionary tale of an isolated civilization that destroyed itself through reckless misuse of resources. But new analysis of archaeological remains might rewrite the narrative, painting the Rapa Nui people in a more positive light.

When most of us think of leisure-style fishing trawlers, chances are that we don't envision something clean-running and quiet. That's what the folks at Amsterdam's Trondheim Trawlers are developing, however, in the form of the Trondheim 40 electric trawler.

For this year's CES, Beijing drone-builder PowerVision has taken the wraps off a submersible drone that uses sonar to detect fish, blue light to lure them in and a 4K camera to stream all the action back to the boat.

If you don't recognize a fish you catch, how do you know if you can keep it? With a quick scan of your catch, a new app called FishVerify can identify a species, bring up information on its habitat and edibility, and using the phone's GPS, tell you about its size and bag limits in that area.

​When fish are processed in trawlers at sea, the animals' heads, guts and skeletons all just go overboard. It's a lot of waste, so Norway's SINTEF research group has developed a system that puts everything but the bones to use.

​A humpback whale off the coast of California that was entangled in rope seems to have freed itself from the lines. A video from a tour operator caught the detangled giant mammal swimming in the waters of the state's southern coast, along with some frolicking dolphin companions.​