Bycatch is an old fisheries problem, but a relatively new topic in fisheries management. The increased awareness is often credited to the growth of conservation movements, but also a more recent understanding – especially by the industry that marine resources are exhaustible, and that worldwide fishing efforts are excessive and threatening to marine stocks. The issue of bycatch and discards has...

Rebecca L. Lewison*, Sloan A. Freeman and Larry B. Crowder Duke University Marine Laboratory, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, 135 Duke Marine Lab Road, Beaufort, NC 28516, USA *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The depletion of fish stocks from global fisheries has been a long-standing concern. More recently, incidental catch of non-target (termed ...

Žydelis et al. (2009 [this issue]) is a direct critique of 2 recent papers we published on the use of biodiversity offsets in managing fisheries bycatch (Wilcox & Donlan 2007; Donlan & Wilcox 2008). The authors misrepresent the use of biodiversity offsets as we presented them, misunderstand the policy objectives of fisheries (and bycatch) management, present a flawed analysis of the appropriate...

The inability of fishers to avoid bycatch when operating in a multispecies fishery can create problems when the bycatch species itself is the subject of conservation-based controls. Increased protection of the bycatch species can only be achieved through a reduction in the overall catch of the fishery. Such a problem has arisen in the Australian south east fishery where the stock of one bycatch...

Methodology We attempted to document all available information on fishing techniques that have been used to reduce non-target wildlife species bycatch in world fisheries. Information on bycatch reduction methods is highly diffuse and for this review we consulted various sources including journal articles, unpublished government reports, and experts in the field. A number of reviews have examine...

This paper discusses best practice for collecting seabird bycatch data in pelagic longline observer programs. The paper recognizes that key challenges for WCPFC include: • The levels of observer coverage needed for recording and monitoring bycatch of non-target species such as seabirds, which typically have high variability in CPUE • The need to divide observer time between a range of tasks • T...

Understanding the distribution of bycaught sea turtles could inform conservation strategies and priorities. This research analyses the distribution of turtles caught as longline fisheries bycatch on the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean. This research collected 18,142 bycatch observations and 47.1 million hooks from large-scale Taiwanese longline vessels in the Atlantic Ocean from June 2002 to De...

The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta, Linnaeus, 1758) is the most abundant sea turtle species in the Mediterranean Sea, where commercial fishing appears to be the main driver of mortality. So far, information on sea turtle bycatch in Italy is limited both in space and time due to logistical problems in data collected through onboard observations and on a limited number of vessels involved...

Operational longline fishery characteristics, bycatch information, and loggerhead turtle satellite tracks were all used in conjunction with remotely sensed sea surface temperature data to identify the environmental area where the majority of loggerhead turtle bycatch occurred in the Hawaii-based longline fishery during 1994 to 2006. In the first quarter of each calendar year from 1994 to 2006, ...

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed each year as bycatch in longline fisheries. Seabirds are predominantly caught during line setting but bycatch is generally recorded during line hauling, many hours after birds are caught. Bird loss during this interval may lead to inaccurate bycatch information. In this 15 year study, seabird bycatch was recorded during both line setting and line hau...