Optimist Daily: The floating scarecrow saving seabirds from fishing nets

A bird-shaped kite and a floating scarecrow with spinning eyes reduced seabird deaths in Cornish fishing nets by up to 71 percent in a two-year trial. The devices cost relatively little, don’t require significant changes to how fishers work, and are already on the market. An estimated 95,000 diving birds drown in gillnets off European coasts every year, including razorbills and guillemots, whose North Atlantic populations have been declining. Gillnets hang vertically beneath the water’s surface, nearly invisible to diving birds, which swim straight into them and can’t get back up. It’s been a documented problem for decades, and until now the solutions available to fishers who wanted to do something about it have been thin. More HERE.