Spotted: Fish bycatch – when commercial fishers unintentionally catch fish and other marine animals that they cannot use – has a significant negative impact on the marine environment. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, around 38 million tonnes of sea creatures are unintentionally caught each year, representing around 40 per cent of worldwide catches. Most of this bycatch ends up dead.
A UK company – SafetyNet Technologies – has now developed technology aimed at reducing bycatch. The company designs and builds ‘precision fishing’ devices to increase the selectivity of commercial fishing practices, making the industry more sustainable.
The flagship product, called Pisces, is designed to improve the selectivity of fishing gear. It uses coloured LED lights to attract the target species while deterring unwanted bycatch, helping fishing crews to save time sorting fish.
SafetyNet has also developed an affordable underwater camera and sensor that attach to fishing gear and help fishing crews gather data. This allows them to increase efficiency, reduce bycatch, and measure the effects of climate change on fisheries. Together, SafetyNet says these technologies help both fishers and fish.
The company has recently secured £1.8 million (around €2 million) in new funding to accelerate the development of its precision fishing technology.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the percentage of stocks fished at biologically unsustainable levels reached 35.4 per cent in 2019. Luckily, Springwise is also spotting innovations aimed at protecting marine life, ranging from next-generation quiet boat propellers to turning harmful algae into sustainable products.
Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno has changed the HVAC and electrical system of the Serpentine gallery in London, in an effort to make an exhibition for all the nearby species.
Titled Web(s) of Life, the exhibition presents some of the artist’s most recent and well-known environmentally focused works, while also encompassing interventions into the building itself.
These interventions aim to make the Serpentine South building housing the exhibition more porous and responsive to its setting in Kensington Gardens, challenging anthropocentric perspectives that only consider the interests of humans and not any other beings.
Tomás Saraceno has made changes to the Serpentine South building for his exhibition
Sculptures made for the enjoyment of a variety of different animals are placed on the building’s grounds, facade and roof as well as inside the building, while complex webs woven by multiple types of spiders working “in collaboration” with Saraceno feature inside the dimly lit galleries.
“You see that many architectures today are somehow not so inclusive of what is happening on the planet,” said Saraceno, who trained as an architect. “I’m very happy to think that for the first time at the Serpentine, there are many spiderweb pavilions.”
“It’s a little bit about trying to think how animal architecture could enter into the discourse and how we need to have a much more equilibrated and balanced way of building cities today on Earth,” he told Dezeen.
Saraceno’s Cloud Cities sculptures can be found in the grounds
To make the gallery interior more comfortable for spiders and other insects, the equipment that controls the building’s temperature and humidity has been switched off and some doorways opened to allow for free movement of both air and animal life.
Given the exhibition will run throughout the British summertime, this might mean some discomfort for human visitors – but within limits. According to the Serpentine’s chief curator Lizzie Carey-Thomas, the gallery will allow the staff on its floor to decide when conditions are too hot for them to work safely or for visitors to have an enjoyable time.
At that point, the gallery will close rather than switch on the air-conditioning, encouraging visitors to enjoy the installations outside in the park and under the trees.
The sculptures also feature inside the gallery
A further intervention by Saraceno comes in the form of a new solar array on the Serpentine’s roof, which will power all the films and lights in the exhibition.
The destructive effects of lithium mining on the environment and Indigenous communities is a key theme of the exhibition. So Saraceno and the Serpentine are avoiding the use of a lithium battery and instead embracing the intermittency of solar power by adapting the exhibition’s energy use to the level of sunshine outside.
On cloudy or partly cloudy days, films will run less frequently and lights will be dimmed. On particularly sunless days, the films may switch to audio-only, while some lights will switch off altogether.
“The irony there is that on the extreme heat days with lots of sun, we will have full power but we won’t be able to open the exhibition,” said Carey-Thomas.
As the Serpentine South building is heritage listed, both Carey-Thomas and Saraceno say the process for making any alterations was complex and drawn out, with approval for the solar panels taking two years and other plans to remove windows and doors quickly abandoned.
The exhibition environment is meant to be more comfortable for spiders, whose webs are on display
The works within the exhibition include Saraceno’s Cloud Cities sculptures, which feature compartments specifically designed for different animals such as birds, insects, dogs, hedgehogs and foxes.
The artist is also screening a film that documents one of the instalments of his Aerocene project, which involves making an entirely fossil-free aircraft powered purely by air heated by the sun with no need for batteries, helium, hydrogen or lithium.
In the film, the Aerocene team completes the world’s first piloted solar-powered flight, flying a balloon sculpture over the highly reflective salt flats in Salinas Grandes.
A film in the exhibition documents Saraceno’s fossil-free flight project
There is also a work created specifically for children, called Cloud Imagination, which is accessed through a dog-shaped door that’s too small for most adults to enter.
Saraceno and the Serpentine describe the Web(s) of Life exhibition as having been created “in collaboration” with a host of different contributors, both human and non-human.
These include the communities of Salinas Grandes and Laguna de Guayatayoc in Argentina, spider diviners in Cameroon, the communities around Aerocene and Saraceno’s Arachnophilia project, and the lifeforms found in the Royal Parks surrounding the Serpentine, which will continue to evolve the works over the next three months.
The work Cloud Imagination is created for children only
The artist and gallery also want to extend the ethos of the exhibition to the potential sale of the artworks by developing a scheme called partial common ownership or, Saraceno hopes, “partial common stewardship”, which means any buyer would “co-own” the work along with a designated species or community.
Another recent artwork to have explored ideas of intermittency in energy and design is Solar Protocol, which looks at the potential of a solar-powered internet.
The photography is by Studio Tomás Saraceno.
Tomás Saraceno In Collaboration: Web(s) of Life will take place at Serpentine South in London, UK from 1 June to 10 September 2023 and culminate with a day-long festival on Saturday, 9 September including a weather-dependent Aerocene flight. For more information about events, exhibitions and talks, visit Dezeen Events Guide.
Spotted: As smartphones have become increasingly ubiquitous, there has been a corresponding increase in the amount of time that people spend looking at screens. This has led to concerns about the effect that phones are having on our ability to connect with the world around us. While efforts to get people to put down their phones and engage with nature have often been unsuccessful, one new app is hoping to change that.
EarthSnap is a new app that allows people to identify plant and animal species via their mobile phone’s camera. The app also provides information about the local area and its wildlife, helping to educate users about the natural world. The information will be open-source and shared with citizens and the scientific community. By making this tool available to as many people as possible, Eric Ralls, Founder and CEO of EarthSnap said he aims to “bring people back to nature, to help them realize that humanity is a part of nature, not ‘apart’ from nature.”
EarthSnap also features a social community: Earthchat. The e-social community connects users with other ecologically conscious individuals and organisations from all over the world via forums and feeds. The hope is that this will help promote and spread eco-friendly causes. EarthSnap is fully launched and can be found on the AppleStore and Google Playstore. The platform currently holds information on 2 million plant and animal species, and will use uploaded photos to grow EarthSnap’s database.
There are around 8.7 million species on Earth. With land use, pollution, and climate change driving a loss of biodiversity and an increasing number of species at risk, it is essential that we find ways to identify and protect them. Springwise has spotted several other recent innovations that aim to preserve and promote biodiversity. These include a method for conducting environmental surveys using DNA, biotech that matches trees to the eco-system, and a catfood brand helping to restore the world’s coral reefs.
