Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries

Today’s good news story comes from the Good News Network. Here it is in its entirety.

Marine biologists have found that $8 green LEDs affixed to fishermen’s gill nets were enough to dissuade vast amounts of sea animals like turtles, rays, and sharks from falling prey to these nets.

Originally tested by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on sea turtles off the coast of Hawai’i, they are proving even more effective on Humboldt squid and the elasmobranch family, which contains sharks and rays.

Gill nets are indiscriminate, and if a fisherman snags a thrashing shark, a four-foot-long Humboldt squid—known in Spanish as the “Red Devil”—or an unwelcome stingray, it can be incredibly dangerous entangling them without out-rightly killing them first.

Termed bycatch, the catching of unsought marine life accounts for 40% of all net-caught animals around the world and has been a major threat to…