Electronic Monitoring of Endangered Smalltooth Sawfish Bycatch in the Florida Pink Shrimp Fishery

Smalltooth sawfish are large fish within the shark family.  They are slowing growing, long living, and do not reproduce rapidly. They once ranged throughout the tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic Ocean, but their range has declined dramatically due to fishing, habitat loss, overexploitation, and most recently toxic algae blooms. They were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2003, and a federal recovery plan was published in 2009.

While there has never been a large-scale directed fishery, smalltooth sawfish become easily entangled in fishing gear (gill nets, otter trawls, trammel nets, and seines), often resulting in serious injury or death. The long, toothed rostrum of the smalltooth sawfish easily entangles in the webbing of various nets, including otter trawls.

While bycatch in shrimp trawls is a relatively rare occurrence, recently published research indicates that the US Florida pink shrimp fishery may be a greater threat to the endangered smalltooth sawfish than previously understood. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) ’s latest sawfish bycatch estimates for the Gulf shrimp fleet range from 6 to 258 per year. At lower levels of bycatch, the population is expected to grow, whereas higher levels are likely to push the species closer to extinction. This uncertainty is due to a lack of data on sawfish interactions with the shrimp fishery.

To address this lack of data, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership is partnering with LGL Ecological Research Associates and Saltwater Inc., with support from Publix, Cox’s Wholesale Seafood, and Wood’s Fisheries, to develop and test innovative electronic monitoring (EM) systems that will improve monitoring of smalltooth sawfish bycatch in the Florida pink shrimp fishery. Funding for the project is being provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and Publix.

The 2-year project will be operated independent of NOAA and is designed to collect videos footage of fishing activity using two different systems: vessel-mounted and underwater cameras.  Issues of privacy concerns of fishermen will be addressed as no deck-focused cameras will be required.

Eight vessels will be asked to participate in the project, each participating vessel will receive a stipend to offset time spent at the dock during equipment installation and rotating/returning hard drives each trip.