Seabird bycatch on longline fishing vessels kills hundreds of thousands of birds annually, particularly albatrosses. Simple fishing modifications can dramatically reduce this preventable mortality.
Seabird bycatch causes drowning deaths that are neither instantaneous nor painless. Birds that dive for baited hooks become entangled as lines sink, and drown over minutes while restrained underwater. The welfare harm of each individual death is significant, and the scale — hundreds of thousands annually — makes this one of the largest preventable sources of seabird suffering globally. The tragedy is compounded by the availability of highly effective solutions that require only modest investment and behavioral change from fishing operations. Regulatory requirements for bycatch reduction measures exist in some fisheries but are unevenly enforced and absent from many jurisdictions where the affected fleets operate.