Fishing with insecticide-laced mosquito nets is a global phenomenon

Fishermen in the Dili district of Timor-Leste have found an extra perk of the insecticide added to their mosquito bed nets: the chemicals act as a Taser for shrimp. The bed nets are supposed to ward off malaria, but, with a few strong branches and some twine, it’s easy to refashion them into fishing nets that immobilize small shrimp or fish with toxins and ensnare them in the mesh. The fishermen of Dili aren’t the only ones to come up with this idea, either. People in developing countries around the world are repurposing mosquito nets to catch fish, according to a new study, and the practice could have significant environmental and socioeconomic implications. In nearby Papua New Guinea, study participants reported Chinese traders giving mosquito nets to fishermen to catch seahorses, a valuable ingredient in Chinese traditional medicine. An ocean away, on the shallow waters of Lake Alaotra, Madagascar’s largest freshwater body, people use their bed nets to catch juvenile fish. A juvenile trevally caught in a mosquito net in coastal Mozambique. Trevally are a group of species that are commercially important in the region. Photo by Rebecca Short. None of this was too surprising to Rebecca Short, a researcher with the Zoological Society of London and lead author of the new study. Short first witnessed the practice in a beach town in Mozambique, where she watched two women use mosquito nets to scoop small sea creatures out of the surf. Later during the trip, Short realized just how widespread…

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