Fishing Gear Entanglements
Overview
Globally, one of the biggest threats to whales, other marine mammals, and sea turtles is bycatch in fishing gear, including entanglement with ropes. Join Oceana’s effort to reduce death and disfigurement of sea life through the use of on-demand and other animal-safe fishing gear.
Ocean animals face a gauntlet of fishing nets, vertical lines or ropes, and buoys throughout their habitats. This gear can wrap around whales’ mouths and bodies, ripping into their flesh and cutting into bone, and leading to life-threatening infections and even amputations. Entangled whales struggle to swim, reproduce, and feed, which can lead to starvation and drowning. Three out of every four entanglements are fatal.
While many species of whales and sea turtles can get entangled in fishing gear, it is particularly devastating to critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, humpback whales, gray whales, blue whales, and Pacific leatherback sea turtles, all of which travel vast distances in U.S. waters.
Many entanglements involve vertical lines or ropes associated with conventional trap fishing. Conventional traps are common worldwide and typically viewed as a sustainable gear type because they have little habitat damage and minimal direct bycatch compared with other gear types like trawls. Fishermen will drop a baited trap, or string of traps, into the ocean and let them sink to the seafloor. For fishermen to know the location of their traps and retrieve them, a vertical line is attached to the gear and typically connected to one or more floats at the surface. Traps, and the connected vertical ropes, can sit in the ocean for days or weeks before fishermen haul them in, depending on the fishery and how it is regulated.
Ways to Prevent Fishing Gear Entanglement
Tell U.S. and Canadian Government Officials to Protect North Atlantic Right Whales
Fishing gear entanglements can cause slow, brutal, and preventable deaths. Swift action is needed to adopt solutions like on-demand gear and other alternatives.
Time and Area Closures
One way to reduce wildlife entanglements is to remove fishing gear that uses vertical lines and surface buoys when whales or other wildlife are expected or detected. In California, closures for Dungeness crab fishing with conventional gear in certain areas and at certain times have been an effective part of the solution. However, this has led to shorter fishing seasons and less consistency for fishermen.
Gear Reductions
Campaign Victories
Campaigning by Oceana and our allies is advancing the adoption of on-demand fishing gear.
Oregon Adopts New Protections Against Deadly Whale Entanglements
Ropeless Fishing Gear Approved in the South Atlantic
Limiting the number of traps and vertical lines in the ocean can reduce the likelihood of wildlife entanglements. Both California and Oregon reduced the number of allowed traps in the Dungeness crab fisheries when whales and other wildlife nearby to protect wildlife from entanglement in the fishing gear.
On-Demand Fishing Gear
Along with management measures like time and area closures, Oceana has worked with fishermen, gear manufacturers, fishery managers, enforcement officers, and others to advance the development and use of innovative technology such as on-demand (also known as pop-up or ropeless) fishing gear in closed areas to allow continued whale-safe fishing opportunities.
What is On-Demand Fishing Gear?
On-demand fishing gear refers to traps or pots fished in a way that eliminates the use of vertical lines and surface buoys until the fisherman is ready to retrieve them to avoid endangering marine life.
Watch: Why On-Demand Fishing Gear is Beneficial for Whales and Fishers
For ocean animals like whales and sea turtles, entanglements in the long lines of fishing gear are all too common. But with on-demand gear, the buoys and lines stay down with the trap until fishers hit the signal for the buoy to be released, reducing the risk of entanglement. Watch to learn more about how on-demand fishing gear is a win-win for both marine life and fishers.
How Does On-Demand Fishing Gear Work?
While traditional traps or pots are connected to a buoy with a vertical line, on-demand gear stores the line and buoy with the trap on the ocean floor. There’s even some gear that doesn’t use buoys at all, but rather a lift bag, which is a flotation device that inflates using compressed air when the trap is recalled, allowing it to float to the surface. When it’s time to collect traps, a fisherman sends a signal from the boat to the trap in the water using a smartphone tablet and an acoustic transducer. The on-demand technology then releases the buoy and rope, and the fisherman can retrieve the buoy and haul in the trap. The rope is only vertical in the water for a short window while a fisherman is actively tending to the gear.
Using smartphone apps, fishermen can track their traps in real time, know their exact location, and be ready right when traps surface to retrieve them and ensure the traps they retrieve belong to them.
Field trials and use of on-demand gears in commercial fisheries have shown certain systems of this gear to be extremely reliable with a success rate of over 98%. Including an on-demand unit at each end of the string and using back-up grappling techniques has increased retrieval to nearly 100%, preventing lost or ‘ghost gear.’
Advancing the Use of On-Demand Gear
How Does On-Demand Fishing Gear Work?
Oceana is working with fishermen, gear manufacturers, policymakers, fishery managers, and others in Atlantic Canada, New England, the U.S. South Atlantic region, California, Oregon, and Washington to advance the testing and eventual authorization of on-demand gear as alternative gear to allow continued fishing opportunities in the presence of whales. The first authorization of on-demand gear happened in the California Dungeness crab fishery in the spring of 2026 and it is also allowed in California’s coonstripe shrimp fishery. Trials conducted from 2023–2025 off the California coast brought in crab worth millions of dollars, with high reliability and minimal gear loss.
New entanglement reduction regulations are required to be in place in the U.S. Atlantic by the end of 2028 and may include voluntary use of on-demand gears in whale habitats. This action was delayed by congressional intervention in 2022 and the U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill that will delay this needed action by seven years.
Reports and Fact Sheets
More about On-Demand Fishing Gear
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