Throughout the year, surface longline fishers are out on New Zealand waters chasing highly migratory species like bigeye, yellowfin and bluefin tuna. Most of the time it’s a great gig, but accidental capture of seabirds is a big challenge for this fishery and has 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. However, when the goal is to design a hook that sinks quickly enough to avoid seabird captures, 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 newly designed 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.”
The hook’s designer, international bycatch problem solver Nigel Brothers, wasn’t discouraged by this initial setback. He was confident 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.
“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.
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 a 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.”
The next step was for Mower and King to trial the hook, which they have been doing this season – and it’s been going great.
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 Procella 2.0 hooks) been a hit. We’ve been using them for about three or four months now, and they’re preforming exceptionally well. We’re seeing great fish caught, 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 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.
What is a weighted hook?
Branch line weighting is one of the main ways surface longline fishers keep seabirds safe, as it helps baited hooks sink quickly, keeping them out of the 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 62 grams, 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.
