Dolphin Bycatch: Welfare Costs of Incidental Capture in Fisheries

Dolphins and porpoises are killed in their tens of thousands annually as bycatch in fishing operations, suffering acutely before death in nets and gear.

Key Facts

Hundreds of thousands of cetaceans are killed as bycatch annually worldwide
Common dolphins are the most frequently bycaught cetacean in European Atlantic fisheries
Drift nets, pair trawls, and bottom-set gillnets pose the highest bycatch risk to small cetaceans
Porpoises and dolphins entangled in nets drown; this process can take minutes to over an hour
Acoustic deterrents called pingers significantly reduce small cetacean bycatch when required and maintained
The vaquita porpoise is near extinction with fewer than 10 individuals remaining due primarily to illegal gillnet use

Welfare Considerations

Dolphin bycatch causes suffering at enormous scale that is largely invisible to consumers. Entangled cetaceans experience drowning — a prolonged, terrifying process for mammals with high cognitive complexity and strong social bonds. The welfare harm of a dolphin drowning in a net is comparable to that of a dog or pig dying in equivalent circumstances; the invisibility of the harm in the ocean does not reduce its moral weight. Pinger technology demonstrably reduces cetacean entanglement and is cost-effective, yet its adoption remains inconsistent. Consumer choices — selecting seafood from fisheries with independently verified low bycatch rates — create market incentives for adoption of mitigation measures.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood certified by programs that audit bycatch rates including cetacean bycatch
Support organizations advocating for mandatory pinger use in high-risk fisheries
Reduce consumption of species from fisheries with documented high dolphin bycatch rates
Advocate for strengthened enforcement of bycatch monitoring and reporting requirements