Longline fishing kills hundreds of thousands of seabirds annually as bycatch. This preventable welfare and conservation crisis has practical solutions that are being slowly adopted.
Seabird bycatch in longline fisheries causes significant welfare harm at scale — drowning after becoming entangled on baited hooks is a distressing death. Albatrosses, which can live 60-70 years and bond for life, are disproportionately affected: a single bycatch event kills an animal that has invested years developing a breeding pair bond and may be raising a chick. The scale of the conservation crisis (multiple albatross species threatened by bycatch) is paralleled by the scale of individual welfare harm. The solutions are well-established, inexpensive relative to fishing revenue, and widely adopted in certified sustainable fisheries. The gap between achievable and actual mitigation is regulatory: enforcement in high seas fisheries remains weak. Consumer demand for certified sustainable seafood creates the market incentive for mitigation adoption.