This handbook is a first attempt at putting together, in one place, a summary of what has been studied regarding commercial
fishing gear and its environmental impact. The document, first prepared in 1993, is a reference source for the Greenpeace
worldwide fishery campaign. The handbook provides an historical perspective of how fisheries and fishing gear evolved over
time. The handbook shows the evolution and how it has created problems which many people have attempted to research and resolve.
The working premise is that it is important to know the history of this research in order to proceed to solve these problems.
The reader is introduced to the basic terminology of the fisheries conservation engineer. What is known about these various
subjects is expanded upon, by gear type, and key literature in the subject area is annotated.
