Hundreds of thousands of dolphins and porpoises are accidentally caught in fishing gear each year. Bycatch is a leading cause of cetacean mortality worldwide and inflicts significant suffering on affected individuals.
Drowning in fishing gear is one of the most common causes of death among cetaceans globally. For highly intelligent, social animals capable of complex distress responses, entanglement is almost certainly an acutely terrifying and painful experience. Animals that survive entanglement may sustain net injuries causing chronic infection or impaired swimming. The emotional and social dimension of dolphin bycatch is also significant: pod members have been documented remaining near entangled individuals. The scale of the problem — hundreds of thousands of individuals annually — makes bycatch a major animal welfare issue as well as a conservation one.