Longline fishing catches and kills hundreds of thousands of seabirds annually, including albatrosses and petrels. Simple mitigation measures can dramatically reduce this preventable welfare harm.
Seabird bycatch causes acute drowning deaths for hundreds of thousands of long-lived, cognitively complex birds annually. Albatrosses form long-term pair bonds, raise single chicks with intensive parental investment, and live for decades — their death as bycatch removes individuals from breeding populations with cascading effects on surviving mates and dependent chicks. The acute welfare harm of drowning after longline hook entanglement is severe. The tragedy is compounded by the simplicity of available solutions — bird-scaring lines, night setting, and line weighting are low-cost, proven interventions that fisheries resist adopting without regulatory pressure. Consumer choice of MSC-certified seafood from fisheries verifying seabird bycatch reduction creates market incentives for adoption.