Commercial fishing catches vast quantities of non-target fish species that are discarded, often dead or dying. Understanding bycatch helps focus advocacy on the most impactful solutions.
Discarded fish experience the welfare harms of capture — net abrasion, barotrauma, handling — and are then returned to the sea dead or dying. Fish that survive initial capture but are severely injured die slowly after discard. Bycatch species may spend hours in nets before discard, experiencing hypoxia and crush injury. The welfare cost of bycatch is compounded by its scale — billions of individual fish killed and wasted annually. Reducing bycatch through selective gear and fishing area management reduces welfare harms at population scale.