Floating googly eyes on a stick scare seabirds away from fishing nets

News Scientist ^ | 5 May 2021 | Christa Lesté-Lasserre

[SJackson]

Buoys fitted with cartoon-like eyes act in a similar way to scarecrows, keeping seabirds safely away from areas of the sea where they might get caught in fishing nets.

An estimated 400,000 diving birds drown each year when they become entangled in vertically oriented gill nets that hang down in water between floats or buoys.

In a bid to reduce deaths, a team of bird conservation researchers led by Yann Rouxel at the BirdLife International Marine Programme in Glasgow, UK, has developed and tested a method of turning the buoys into marine scarecrows.

Researchers previously hoped that LED lighting would alert seabirds to the nearly transparent nets, but the birds got tangled up and drowned anyway, says Rouxel. Then he and his team noticed that digital, moving eyes on the screens surrounding airport runways successfully keep birds away from planes.

...snip...

Even so, gill nets usually only stay in a given place for a few days at a time, so it is less likely that the birds would get used to the buoys in a real fishing scenario, says Rouxel.

[SJackson]

Outdoors/Rural/wildlife/hunting/hiking/backpacking/National Parks/animals list please FR mail me to be on or off . And ping me is you see articles of interest.

[Salamander]

Is there anything Googly Eyes can’t do?

[JonPreston]

Marty Feldman was ahead of his time.

[heavy metal]

look you straight in the eyes... 😁

[KC_Lion]

So simple.

Yet genius.

[Covenantor]

They need to do some work on those bouys...something like this should work to scare diving birds.... and boat people...

[metmom]

Researchers previously hoped that LED lighting would alert seabirds to the nearly transparent nets, but the birds got tangled up and drowned anyway, says Rouxel.

Right, because sea birds are smart enough to figure out that LED lights means a net that the don’t understand and is nearly invisible might be a danger to them.

[Rurudyne]

I wonder if they could scare people away from welfare too?

[Salamander]

[Salamander]

:D

[Salamander]

Warn them we have only discovered a tiny percentage of what lurks in the oceans they try to cross...

[Safetgiver]

Where’d you find my ex-wife?

[Salamander]

On a page devoted to Googly Mutants.

:)

[Seruzawa]

Yes. Extremely frightening. Wouldn't want to meet this on a dark night:

[4Liberty]

https://www.sciencealert.com/lions-are-less-likely-to-attack-cattle-with-eyes-painted-on-their-backsides

[Covenantor]

Four eyed scuba diving pit bulls?

Whoa!

We have those?

[4Liberty]

[Salamander]

I was thinking some kind of new quadrupedal basking shark...Googlius Giganticus or somethin’.

;)

[heavy metal]

cia...