Andres Kalamees
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.
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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.