Albatrosses are among the most threatened seabirds on Earth, with longline fishing killing tens of thousands annually in painful, prolonged drowning — a welfare catastrophe that is largely preventable with existing technology.
Albatrosses that become hooked on longlines die by drowning — a prolonged, terrifying death for a bird adapted to live on the ocean surface. The hook penetrates the bill or throat, and the bird is pulled underwater as the line sinks. Animals that survive hooking but are retrieved may have sustained injuries including deep throat lacerations, eye damage, and wing trauma. The welfare impact of individual bycatch deaths is severe; at population scale, the loss of tens of thousands of long-lived, slowly reproducing individuals annually drives population collapses that affect entire communities of these socially bonded seabirds. Bycatch mitigation technology is proven, cost-effective, and widely available — the gap between available solutions and implementation represents a tractable but politically challenging welfare and conservation problem.