Albatrosses are among the most threatened seabirds on Earth, with hundreds of thousands dying each year as bycatch on longline fishing hooks in a largely preventable crisis.
Albatross bycatch causes a painful death by drowning — birds hooked on longlines are dragged underwater and drown as the line sinks with their weight. This is a prolonged and distressing death for animals capable of living for decades. The welfare impact is compounded by the population-level consequences: because albatrosses are long-lived with low reproductive rates, each adult death removes decades of future breeding potential and years of parental experience. Chicks already hatched die of starvation when parents fail to return. The tragedy is that effective, low-cost mitigation tools exist but are not universally required or enforced by fishing regulators and certification bodies.