Throughout the year surface longline fishers are out on New Zealand waters chasing bigeye, yellowfin, bluefin tuna and other highly migratory species. Most of the time it's a pretty fun gig, but accidental capture of seabirds is an issue for this fishery. This recently prompted three fishers to get involved in a unique gear innovation project.
You'd be forgiven for thinking designing a good fishing hook would be relatively easy - after all, there's not much to them. But when the goal is to design a hook that sinks quick enough to avoid seabird capture, is safe for crew to use, and is still good at catching fish, it can take years.
In 2022, Bay of Plenty skipper of Teepookana Josh Mower, along with others in the New Zealand surface longline (SLL) fleet, trialled a new weighted hook called Procella. Fishers were hopeful it would be another tool they could use to help avoid seabird bycatch. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite up to the task.
"We had no input on it (the hook design) whatsoever," Mower recalls. "We all just looked at them (the hooks) like, 'What the hell? This isn't what we want or what we're going to use.'"
Procella hook designer and international bycatch problem solver Nigel Brothers says the first attempt was a fizzer because the manufacturing quality wasn't there.
"The guys in New Zealand gave them a try but quickly tossed them aside because the hooks were bending. They were bending on big fish, and big fish are the ones they want to get onboard."
Despite a rocky start, Australia-based Brothers wasn't discouraged. He believed it was still worth moving forward to test whether the Procella - which has its weight built directly into the shank of the hook - could prove valuable for the industry.
"This is not at all a business venture. It's about saving birds whilst hopefully maintaining successful fish catch.
"Adding a bit of weight to longline gear can make or break the effectiveness of other mitigation measures," says Brothers. "There are of course safety considerations around this but it's sort of like a bottom line of mitigation.
"To get things going again we needed to get a few experienced fishers onside, to commit to helping us redesign the first hook and, if possible to trial it," says Brothers. "This is where Josh Mower, John King and Will Macnicol stepped up and quickly made the Procella their own."
Mower, who fishes for Garcia Fishing Co, says when Brothers approached him, he was pretty keen to help. He saw it as a chance to try things his way - the fisher's way. Macnicol and King felt the same.
Despite being happy with his current set up to mitigate seabird captures, Macnicol was still keen to get involved with the redesign of the Procella because it helps when fishers have a variety of tools in their seabird mitigation toolbox.
Macnicol is a strong advocate for taking an individualised approach to mitigation. "If you're catching birds, you need to ask yourself, 'What are you doing wrong?' or 'What do you need to change?'
"My crew uses a range of mitigation techniques. We use line weighting - that's important for us. We use Hookpods, which can be a bit of a hassle, but you just have to get it right. We also use tori lines, and we'll dye baits if we have to. And, where we can, we try to fish at night."
When it comes to seabird mitigation, Macnicols' philosophy is simple: do your best to minimise harm. "As long as you're mitigating and trying, that's all you can do, really. You can sleep at night.
"At the end of the day who wants a seabird interaction? I would rather catch a little bit less fish just to not even have an interaction. But we are in a very raw fishery, and you do have wildlife encounters. It's just how you deal with it and how you mitigate to avoid them next time."
So, with the three fishers on board, and with the help of retired SLL fisher Dave Kellian, the Procella redesign process got underway. Mower says the collaborative design process wasn't easy; it took countless emails ("probably 500" were
his exact words), drawings and discussions to get to a design they could all agree on - the Procella 2.0.
When asked how the design process went, Brothers says, "I've been in this business for nearly 40 years now, and this is probably the most enjoyable experience of working with fishers on a mitigation project.
"Fiddling with hooks is dicey business but I think it's been a real success. It's amazing how many variations you can come up with on just a heavy hook. It's a fine line between a hook that will work and a hook that won't."
Brothers cheekily adds, "Actually, do you know what they've (Mower, King and Macnicol) done? They've forced me to use WhatsApp as a communication method. I think I might have tormented them for six months with emails."
Fortunately, the WhatsApp group was set up in time for the Procella 2.0 trials to start this season and it's been really great for Brothers to be able to talk to Mower and King - who are trialling the Procella 2.0 - when they're out at sea, in almost "real fishing time".
King, who owns and operates Katrina, has been using the hooks for the past few months. A man of few words, he reports, "they're going good". So good, in fact that he is now running 100% Procella 2.0 hooks on his vessel.
Mower agrees. "They've (the Porcella 2.0 hooks) been a hit. We've been using the for about three or four months now, and they're preforming exceptionally well. We're seeing great fish catched, and they're a safer option too."
Safety concerns are always top of mind in the fishing industry. One key feature of the Procella 2.0 is the placement of the weight incorporated into the hook itself, which Mower believes reduces the risk of flybacks - a common hazard when weights are positioned further up the line.
"We've used hooks with swivels and sliding weights before," Mower explains. "But for me the weight at the hook is the safest option. With swivels, when a shark chews off part of the line, the weight comes flying back. Keeping the weight at the hook minimises that risk and gives seabirds greater protection."
Mower and his crew are also now using the Procella hooks exclusively. "We're at 100% now," he says proudly. "Word is spreading, too. Other fishers are curious to see how they perform, and they're seeing these hooks are making a real difference."
Mower stresses the importance of involving fishers in the design and trial process. "A lot of the time, we're just told what to use. We don't always get consulted, and when we do, we're not always heard. It's great to have a product that's been designed with our input and is proving successful."
Macnicol adds, "Someone in an office can say, 'You need to do this, you need to do that,' but they need to look at individual fisheries and fishers. Every fishery is different, and every fish is different."
Mower has high hopes for the future of the Procella 2.0 hook. "Nigel (Brothers) wants to try getting them made in stainless-steel (currently the hook is made by adding lead with a protective coating), and we're all for it. Our goal is to have the best, safest and most cost-effective weighted hook out there." He believes that with continued fisher involvement, the product will only get better.
Mower's advice to other fishers is straightforward: "Give them a try. I think you'll be surprised. There was some scepticism initially about whether they would work or if they would cause bigger holes in the fish's mouth, but they've proven to be effective."
As for Brothers, he's hoping Seafood New Zealand will be writing a follow-up story on the Procella 3.0 in a years' time - the stainless-steel version of the current design. "By then, we'll have some really solid numbers from our fisher trials which are also feeding into a DOC (Department of Conservation) project to verify the hooks seabird bycatch mitigation effectiveness and the effect on target catch rates. It would be great to have more fishers using them by then; hopefully word of their effectiveness continues to spread."
This story first ran in the September 2024 issue of Seafood Magazine.
What is a weighted hook?
Branch line weighting is one of the main ways surface longline fishers keep seabirds safe, as it helps sink baited hooks quickly, keeping them out of birds' reach. While weights have usually been added to the branch line, new options like the Procella 2.0 offer more weight incorporated into the hook. The Procella 2.0 weighs 62g, so when deployed skilfully by a skipper, it should sink quickly out of reach of seabirds. Other options for weighted hooks include using weighted swivels attached directly to the hook.
