what is bycatch?
The bycatch of fishery resources, marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds, and other living marine resources has become a central concern of the commercial and recreational fishing industries, resource managers, conservation organizations, scientists, and the public, both nationally and globally. During the past 26 years, the regional fishery management councils (the councils) and NMFS have responded to this concern by taking a variety of actions to address the issue of bycatch. The actions have included research to develop better methods for monitoring and reducing bycatch, outreach programs to explain the bycatch problem and search for solutions, and regulatory actions to monitor and decrease bycatch. Congress has responded to this concern by addressing bycatch in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act. For example, National Standard 9 was added to the MSA when it was amended in 1996. It states that "Conservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch." To learn more about protect species bycatch, CLICK HERE.
Definitions
Bycatch: "fish which are harvested in a fishery, but which are not sold or kept for personal use, and includes economic discards and regulatory discards. Such term does not include fish released alive under a recreational catch and release fishery management program" –Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) Section 3(2) (1996)
Bycatch: "Discarded catch of any living marine resource plus retained incidental catch and unobserved mortality due to a direct encounter with fishing gear." --Managing the Nation's Bycatch (1998)
What does "to the extent practicable mean"? From a National perspective, there is too much bycatch mortality in a fishery if a reduction in bycatch mortality would increase the overall net benefit of that fishery to the Nation through alternative uses of the bycatch species. In this case, a reduction in bycatch mortality is practicable and the excess bycatch mortality is a wasteful use of living marine resources. In many cases, it may be possible but not practicable to eliminate all bycatch and bycatch mortality.
The Bycatch Problem
Bycatch mortality can decrease the sustainability of fisheries and the net benefits provided by the fisheries in several ways. First, if bycatch mortality is not monitored adequately, it increases the uncertainty concerning total fishing-related mortality, which in turn makes it more difficult to assess the status of stocks to (1) set the appropriate optimum yield and overfishing levels and (2) ensure that the optimum yields are attained and that the overfishing does not occur. Second, if discards are sufficiently concentrated in time and space, they will result in localized environmental degradation. Third, bycatch mortality precludes some other uses of fishery resources. For example, juvenile fish that are subject to bycatch mortality cannot be used to contribute directly to the growth of that stock and to future catch. Bycatch is a wasteful use of living marine resources if it precludes a higher valued use of those resources.
If bycatch could be decreased at no cost, bycatch would be neither a complex nor contentious fishery management problem, and bycatch would simply be eliminated. The bycatch problem is complex, in part, because an action that is taken to reduce the bycatch of one species can increase that of another, or an action that is taken to decrease one type of bycatch mortality can increase another type. It is a contentious issue, in part, because actions to reduce bycatch mortality typically change the distribution of the net benefits from the fisheries.
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