Scientist says he has the device to scare dolphins away from fishing nets

By M elina Demetriou

CYPRUS University Professor Costas Christofides knows how to drive dolphins away from fishing nets.

The answer does not lie in culling, as fishermen have often demanded, but in using high frequency microwaves, he told the Cyprus Mailyesterday.

Christofides wants to present a revolutionary method already applied in Japan to the Fisheries’ Department, but needs foreign experts’ support.

The professor, a physics expert, said that seven years ago his team had created a device for the Department that had never been used. The appliance was created to solve the longstanding problems of fishermen who complain that dolphins destroy their fishing nets.

” This system was used by the Russians during Word War I. A kind of device is attached to nets and transmits high frequency microwaves that disturb dolphins and drive them away,”Christofides explained.

The academic added that the Fisheries’ Department had never used the appliance his team made because of a government policy which prohibited its use.

Christofides revealed that his team had recently created a new device, which also transmits microwaves to chase dolphins away.

This is the kind the Japanese are using and it works with laser,”he said.

Christofides will try to launch the method in Cyprus next year, provided he has professional support from abroad.

” We might present this equipment to the Fisheries’ Department in February, but to do this we need foreign experts to back the effort,”he said.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.