Gaining a better understanding of by-catch of non-target species

Unintended catches of non-target species, often referred to as ‘by-catch’, remain a major sustainability challenge for fisheries and are a key factor in the threats to the conservation of marine megafauna.

We need to understand how species abundance and fishing characteristics contribute to by-catch levels in order to manage this global impact of fisheries effectively. We cannot achieve this without

accurate and reliable estimates of the number of individuals caught incidentallyeach year for all species of particular concern.

The annual estimation of by-catch intended to guide fisheries managementis becoming too complex to be carried out ‘manually’, as the number of speciesof concern is increasing and there are numerous fishing practices likely to generate by-catch.

In European waters, it is mandatory to estimate by-catch for 244 species present in 16 ecoregions and 25 fishing practices. This involves producing nearly 14,000 by-catch estimates each year, by coordinating aggregated data from 22 national monitoring programmes.

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