Ian, I'm a newspaper reporter in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Earlier this
year, we published a series on a variety of fisheries issues, including
overfishing, entitled :"Oceans of Trouble: Are the World's Fisheries
Doomed?." One person I reported on was Segundo Coello, who works for the
Ecuador Program for Management of Coastal Resources. In connection with
Ecuador's Fisheries Research Institute, he designed a scissors net that
included a bycatch reduction device. The net, called a Tijera, is used by
larveros - natives who wade into shallow coastal waters to catch shrimp larva
for resale to shrimp farms. The larveros dump bycatch on the beach when the
come in with their shrimp larva.  He is now traveling from village to village
teaching women how to sew the new nets themselves.
I'm at home, but I think I still have Coello's address at work, and will send
it to you next week if I find it. I would imagine he may have some sort of
studies indicating the significance of the bycatch problem that he used to
convince Ecuadorian officials to finance his program.

Mark Schleifstein
The Times-Picayune