Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed or injured by fishing gear annually. Reducing bycatch through practical measures can dramatically reduce this welfare toll.
Seabird bycatch causes both direct welfare harm and longer-term population effects with their own welfare implications. Birds that are hooked and drowned experience acute suffering before death. Those that escape with injuries — severed limbs, hook injuries — may face longer periods of suffering before dying or, if they survive, may be unable to feed efficiently and eventually starve. At the population level, the loss of adult breeding birds creates welfare impacts on surviving chick and partner bonds. The tragedy of seabird bycatch is compounded by the existence of highly effective, low-cost mitigation measures that are not universally adopted. Properly deployed tori lines, blue-dyed bait, and weighted lines can reduce bycatch by more than 90% at minimal cost to fishing operations.