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Turning a Blind Eye: The 'See No Evil' Approach to Wasteful Fishing 2006-07-06 BycatchReport.pdf

Executive Summary

Every year, the vast fleet of trawlers, seiners, longliners,
charter and private sportfishing boats, and other vessels
that catch fish in our nation’s waters discard a large
proportion of their catch, often dead or dying. Virtually
all fisheries, no matter how selective the equipment used
or area fished, catch and subsequently discard significant
numbers of non-targeted species, referred to in fisheries
jargon as “bycatch.” Fishermen often throw these
organisms overboard because they are either too small
or have little or no economic value. In the majority of
fisheries, however, most discards are mandatory; federal
regulations require that bycatch be returned to the ocean,
as unharmed as possible. This action is intended to prevent
the wanton overexploitation and potential decimation
of populations of fish and other marine life, including
not only finfish, shellfish, and crustaceans, but also birds,
turtles, and marine mammals. Unfortunately, bycatch
restrictions are often not implemented or enforced, and even
if they are, a high percentage of the fish and other species
that are caught and returned to the ocean do not survive.

The sheer number and amount of fish and other marine
life that are unintentionally caught by hooks, traps, or in
fishing nets each year is staggering. In 2002, the bycatch
in twenty-seven of the nation’s most important fisheries
totaled more than 2 billion pounds, the equivalent by
weight of over 270,000 Hummer H2 sport-utility vehicles,
more than fifteen QE2 luxury liners, or 7 billion fish
fillet sandwiches. The full magnitude of the problem is
unknown since, with few exceptions, fisheries managers
have failed to monitor bycatch, despite being required to
by federal law. In order to manage our fisheries effectively,
fisheries managers must account for the additional fish
and other ocean wildlife killed as bycatch, so that healthy
fish populations are not overfished, sensitive or depressed
populations are not driven to levels below which they
cannot recover, and marine ecosystems are not degraded.
Without good bycatch data, we are steering blind.

High rates of bycatch – and the fishing practices that
cause them – can have profound ecological effects, such
as the alteration of food webs, shifting predator-prey
dynamics, and habitat destruction. But bycatch is not just
an ecological problem. Because it often comprises younger
individuals of commercially valuable species that have
not yet reproduced, if not controlled and accounted for,
bycatch can lead to overfishing, reduced productivity and,
therefore, reduced catch level over the long term. The
economic consequences for fishermen, processors, and
consumers are enormous.

Ten years ago, Congress amended the Magnuson-Stevens
Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) – the
cornerstone federal fisheries management law – in part to
acknowledge that bycatch is a major problem with severe
ecological and socio-economic consequences. Among other
things, the 1996 amendments to the MSA require that
federal fisheries managers minimize bycatch, minimize the
mortality of bycatch that can not be avoided, and establish
bycatch reporting plans for each fishery they manage.
 
This report updates our 2001 assessment of bycatch in
fisheries managed under the MSA, focusing on the last five
years (2001-2006). We report on the efforts of each council
to address bycatch in the nation’s “dirtiest” fisheries. These
include fisheries that account for the largest quantities of
fish and other marine life discarded each year (discards),
and those that feature the highest rates of discards relative
to the amount of catch retained (landings). In some cases,
the same fisheries that discard the most fish have the lowest
discard-to-landings ratios. In the worst cases, the poundage
of fish discarded and discard-to-landings ratio are both
high; it is in these, the dirtiest fisheries, that the failures of
fisheries management are most glaring. While we found
promising developments in some fisheries, the lack of
progress overall toward reducing or eliminating bycatch
remains poor. Given the livelihoods and resources at stake,
after ten years of expense and effort, we expect better.
Here is a summary of our major findings.