Seabirds face multiple threats from longline fishing bycatch to plastic pollution and climate change. Targeted interventions can dramatically reduce mortality and improve population welfare.
Seabird welfare involves both acute suffering from bycatch drowning and entanglement, and chronic welfare impacts from plastic ingestion, prey scarcity, and the energetic demands of long-distance migration. The scale of longline bycatch mortality is particularly troubling given that effective mitigation measures exist and are simply not being applied universally. Plastic pollution causes protracted suffering as birds slowly starve with stomachs full of indigestible material. Climate-driven prey changes are creating chronic nutritional stress across multiple populations. The good news is that many of these welfare harms are preventable through proven interventions that require political will and industry cooperation to implement.