According to Oceana, these nine fisheries combined throw away almost half of what they catch and are responsible for more than 50% of all reported ‘bycatch’ in the US, injuring and killing thousands of protected and endangered species every year.
The report – Wasted Catch: Unsolved Bycatch Problems in US Fisheries – Oceana explains that despite significant progress in the last decade, the catch of non-target fish and ocean wildlife, or ‘bycatch’, remains a significant problem in domestic fisheries. Researchers have estimated that approximately 20% of the total US catch is thrown away each year.
“Anything can be bycatch,” said Dominique Cano-Stocco, campaign director at Oceana. “Whether it’s the thousands of sea turtles that are caught to bring you shrimp, or the millions of pounds of cod and halibut that are thrown overboard after fishermen have reached their quota, bycatch is a waste of our ocean’s resources. Bycatch also represents a real economic loss when one fisherman trashes another fisherman’s catch.”
Though some fishing methods are more harmful than others, researchers, fisheries managers and conservationists all agree that bycatch is generally highest in open ocean trawl, longline and gillnet fisheries. These three gear types alone are responsible for the majority of bycatch in the US and are used by these nine ‘dirty’ fisheries.
(Based on data published by the National Marine Fisheries Service.)
“Hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales, sharks, sea birds, sea turtles and fish needlessly die each year as a result of indiscriminate fishing gear,” said Amanda Keledjian, report author and marine scientist at Oceana. “It’s no wonder that bycatch is such a significant problem, with trawls as wide as football fields, longlines extending up to 50 miles with thousands of baited hooks and gillnets up to two miles long. The good news is that there are solutions. Bycatch is avoidable.”
Unfortunately, the bycatch problem in the US is likely much worse than realised, because most fisheries don’t have adequate monitoring in place to document exactly what and how much is caught and subsequently discarded. In some fisheries, as few as one in 100 fishing trips carry impartial observers to document catch, while many are not monitored at all, leading to large gaps in knowledge and poor quality data.
“The solution can be as simple as banning the use of drift gillnets, transitioning to proven cleaner fishing gears, requiring Turtle Excluder Devices in trawls, or avoiding bycatch hotspots,” said Dr Geoff Shester, California programme director at Oceana. “Proven solutions and innovative management strategies can significantly reduce the unnecessary deaths of sharks, sea turtles, dolphins and other marine life, while maintaining vibrant fisheries.”
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