Bycatch News

The Consortium-sponsored research shows that reducing excess rope strength in fishing gear could cut North Atlantic right whale deaths from entanglements by 72 percent.

American Bird Conservancy has launched a website (fisheryandseabird.info) to assist fisheries evaluators and managers to better understand the potential seabirds affected by their fisheries and to reduce bycatch.

ICES Journal of Marine Science has published papers as part of a special section on marine mammal-longline depredation and bycatch

Study is part of a contribution to the Consortium's research into the potential of whale-safe hooks.

The Bycatch Consortium was featured in a June 2014 article in The Guardian, An unusual partnership works to make fishing more sustainable. 

Since the 1970s, fisheries bycatch has been increasingly recognized as a factor responsible for reducing or liminiting the recovery of marine mammal populations in many parts of the world. A new study from the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction reviews reported marine mammal bycatch from the last two decades. 

I sat down to talk about the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction's work with Andrew Lewin, who founded Speak Up for Blue, a website dedicated to communicating about ocean conservation. 

Do circle hooks reduce bycatch?...It depends.

Last week, NOAA hosted over 160 marine scientists, fisheries managers, gear experts, and commercial and recreational fishermen, from 20 countries, in Coral Gables, FL, for the first international symposium on circle hooks in research, management and conservation.  While we all came away more informed about circle hooks, we left with more questions about their effectiveness for catching target species and reducing bycatch.

The Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch has been featured in the August 22, 2011 New York Times Science article, "Fishing Gear is Altered to Ease Collateral Costs to Marine Life".  

"The seafood on your plate is not the only animal that gave its life to feed you," is one of the messages from Tim Werner, the director of the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. While fishing for tuna, lobster, or other tasty seafood, we catch, injure, and kill other fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, sea birds, and invertebrates.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) determined that the scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini), an Atlantic highly migratory species (HMS), is overfished (NOAA 04/28/2011).