Marine Mammal Entanglement in Fishing Gear

Ghost gear and active fishing equipment entanglement kills hundreds of thousands of marine mammals annually, causing drowning, injury, and prolonged suffering.

Key Facts

An estimated 300,000 cetaceans are killed by bycatch or entanglement annually
Ghost gear — lost or abandoned fishing equipment — continues to trap animals for years
Whale entanglement in ropes causes slow starvation as animals cannot feed effectively
Ropeless fishing technology can eliminate vertical lines that entangle large whales
Disentanglement teams save individual animals but cannot address the systemic problem

Welfare Considerations

Marine mammal entanglement causes some of the most prolonged suffering documented in the ocean. Whales entangled in vertical ropes can drag gear for months or years, unable to feed properly, developing deep rope wounds that become infected. Dolphins and porpoises caught in gillnets drown within minutes. For long-lived species like North Atlantic right whales — of which fewer than 350 remain — each entanglement death is a population crisis as well as a welfare emergency. Systemic solutions including gear modification, ropeless fishing systems, and fishing exclusion zones near whale feeding grounds are available but require regulatory mandating.

What You Can Do

Support campaigns for ropeless fishing technology mandates in critical whale habitats
Report entangled marine mammals to coast guard or wildlife authorities immediately
Avoid seafood from fisheries with documented high bycatch of cetaceans
Donate to organisations developing and deploying marine mammal disentanglement capacity