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180 V. Maccarrone et al. / Turk. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 14: 173-181 (2014)
equipment. In particular, pingers could also benefit
from the aid provided by the EFF in Art 25
“Investments on board fishing vessels and selectivity”
that states “The EFF may contribute to the financing
of equipment and modernisation works” at comma 6
and “for the protection of catches and gear from wild
predators, including through changes to the material
of parts of the fishing gear, provided that it does not
increase the fishing effort or undermine the selectivity Bearzi, G., Bonizzoni, S. and Gonzalvo, J. 2011. Dolphins
of the fishing gear and that all appropriate measures
are introduced to avoid physically damaging the
predators” at point e. For European fishermen, this
opportunity provided by European Regulations could
be the only effective tool that could be used to face
the economic losses caused by bottlenose dolphin.
The pingers show advantages on two levels of
the problem management. The first is referred to as
the behavioural aspect (depredation) and is directly
related to the conservation of the naturalness of
species (IUCN, 2008), and the second is considered
the economic aspect of the product landed and is
related to the social and economic aspects of the
management process of coastal resources (EFF,
2006).
However, an uncontrolled use of these devices
can exhibit effects on cetaceans, such as the possible
damage to the auditory system (Marton et al., 2002;
Taylor et al., 1997), the removal of the dolphin
populations in the fishing area, and the "dinner bell
effect" (Richardson et al., 1995). More generally, we
have to consider that a massive use of pingers in the
fishing area results in an increase in the wide-band
frequency noise, which might exhibit a possible
negative effect in other organisms, including fish
(Buscaino et al., 2010; Slabbekoorn et al., 2010), as
described by Buscaino et al. (2010), and crustaceans.
For example, a recent study showed that lobsters can
emits high-frequency sounds (Buscaino et al., 2012)
and consequently can perceive some part of the
acoustic signals emitted by a pinger. In this direction,
a recent study showed that the behaviour and some
physiological parameters of an aquatic crustacean can
change if exposed to a 0.1-25 kHz sweep (Celi et al.,
2013).
As a result, the European Regulations should
provide an instrument able to create a register on the
use and distribution of this equipment. Indeed, it
should be noted that the dolphins are in the IUCN Red
List of Threatened Species and are protected by
specific Regulations, such as Bonn, Barcelona, and
Berne, to prevent by-catch (EUCR, 2004).
The economic effects of fish products or damage
to dolphin populations are not the only parameters
that should be evaluated to describe and regulate the
use of these devices. In fact, for many MPAs, the
dolphin presence is intangible assets that are poorly
assessed and exploited and is able to become a part of
the value chain for the local coastal economy, which
includes activities such as dolphin watching,
merchandising, and fishing tourism.
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