Longline and trawl fisheries kill hundreds of thousands of seabirds annually through bycatch — practical mitigation measures can dramatically reduce this mortality.
Seabird bycatch causes acute mortality through drowning — birds dive to seize baited hooks or are struck by trawl cables before they can escape. These deaths represent significant individual welfare harms for highly intelligent, long-lived species with complex social structures and strong pair bonds. Albatrosses and petrels are particularly vulnerable given their foraging behavior and the overlap between their ranges and major longline fisheries. The welfare and conservation tragedy is compounded by the fact that effective mitigation measures exist and are relatively inexpensive to implement — tori lines, strategic hook weighting, underwater setting devices, and modified hauling procedures can reduce bycatch by orders of magnitude. The barrier is compliance and enforcement, not technology.