Coastal Seabird Welfare and Fishing Bycatch

Seabirds including gannets, puffins, and kittiwakes face welfare threats from fishing bycatch, plastic pollution, and climate-driven prey fish shifts that are causing widespread breeding failure.

Key Facts

An estimated 300,000 seabirds are killed annually in longline fisheries globally
Puffin populations on some UK islands have crashed due to sand eel depletion from climate change
Plastic ingestion causes seabirds to feed indigestible material to chicks, causing starvation
Kittiwake populations have declined dramatically around the UK coast
Mitigation measures including bird-scaring lines on longlines and circular hooks significantly reduce seabird bycatch

Welfare Considerations

Seabird welfare is threatened by multiple human-caused pressures that intersect to amplify their impact. Bycatch on longlines causes drowning in air-breathing birds unable to surface. Plastic ingestion from ocean pollution causes gastrointestinal obstruction and feeding false satiety signals to chicks. Climate-driven prey fish shifts mean adult birds must travel much further to find food, causing chick starvation when parents cannot return with enough prey quickly enough. These threats compound each other: nutritionally stressed birds are less able to avoid fishing gear, and birds with plastic-laden gut function are less efficient foragers.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood from fisheries certified to use seabird bycatch mitigation measures
Reduce single-use plastic to lower ocean plastic pollution that harms seabirds
Support seabird conservation organisations monitoring and protecting breeding colonies
Advocate for mandatory bycatch mitigation on all longline fisheries
Participate in beach clean-ups to remove plastic before it enters the ocean