When commercial fishers haul up their nets, they often find a plethora of nontarget species—known as by-catch—entangled amid their catches. From dolphins to sea turtles, millions of animals worldwide die this way each year, and a significant portion of these trapped animals is made up of seabirds such as gulls and albatrosses.
Nearly one-third of seabirds are at risk of extinction, and a new study estimates that almost 200,000 individual birds are caught and killed in European waters as by-catch annually. Gillnetting and longlining are the most deadly for seabirds, with the top three species of by-catch being common guillemots, northern fulmars, and northern gannets.
Although researchers think they’ve probably underestimated seabird by-catch, there’s already enough data to show that coastal EU countries are failing to adequately protect threatened seabird populations. See the original story in Hakai Magazine or check out the study in the journal Animal Conservation.