Longline fishing causes the deaths of hundreds of thousands of seabirds annually, threatening the survival of albatrosses and petrels whose slow reproduction cannot offset high adult mortality.
Seabirds that take baited hooks drown as the line sinks, experiencing terror and physical struggle before death by asphyxiation. Adult albatrosses that die as bycatch leave chicks in nests that starve without the extended parental care these long-lived birds require. The welfare harm extends from the individual bird drowning to orphaned chicks dying over days in remote nest sites. The albatross family, among the most charismatic and long-lived birds on Earth, is being driven toward extinction by a preventable and technically solvable bycatch problem. The availability of highly effective mitigation measures that have been demonstrated in commercial fisheries means that continued seabird bycatch is an avoidable choice.