Bycatch — the unintended capture of non-target species in fishing operations — kills hundreds of millions of marine animals annually. It is among the largest sources of preventable marine animal mortality.
Bycatch animals experience severe welfare harms: capture stress, suffocation, physical injury from gear, and death through drowning for air-breathing species. Given the scale of bycatch mortality, even modest reductions in bycatch rates represent enormous reductions in animal suffering. Simple gear modifications have been shown to dramatically reduce bycatch for specific high-risk species, demonstrating that solutions exist.