Whale-Safe Fishing Gear
Fishing gear designed to stop whales dying in crab-pot lines.
A team collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reduce fatal whale entanglements in fishing lines, attacked from two angles.
Prevention — Taut Pot. A device that keeps the line taut through tidal variation, minimizing the slack in the water column that entangles whales in the first place.
Fail-safe — Whalebreak. A timed-release mechanism that dissolves and detaches the line from the weighted crab pot after an entanglement, freeing the whale from the gear it would otherwise drag until it dies.
The design constraint that mattered most wasn't mechanical — it was economic. Gear that working fishermen can't afford doesn't protect any whales. Both devices were designed cost-effective enough for real adoption.