Bycatch, An Accident
Drowning. One does not need to be in the water, to feel the emotions brought on when drowning. The panic that sets in, the suffocation, can also be felt when ten assignments are due in an hour and you aren’t even done with one. Shifting to the more literal meaning, let's imagine a scenario. You live near a beach, and today being an off-day decide to go for a swim. You have known these waters for years, so you are confident swimming alone. The ocean is refreshing and you go a little deeper and then, a little deeper. Soon your feet are barely touching the floor, but that isn’t something to worry about, the tide is still low. It is all very refreshing. There are a few large rocks on the floor and one of your foot gets caught in between these sharp rocks. A little fear starts to set in, low tide does not last forever. So you start pulling your leg, only to get more stuck. Fear and panic rise within you, and so does the tide. The water starts to go above your head. Now you have two options, try one last time, or give up. So you give one last shot and free yourself. A new feeling of happiness takes over, you survived! The sun is setting, your leg is kind of bleeding from the scratches, so you rush back home. Share your experience with friends and family, in this hypothetical scenario, you won.
The point of imagining all this is to understand how for us, mammals, air is essential. Mammals that live in the ocean, live with the same risks, except maybe for them life is often not the answer. Turtles, dolphins, whales, and even fishes like sharks and other species get caught up in fishing nets meant for a different specific fish. Fishing nets are meant to kill, once entangled, struggles only entangle the ocean-citizen more until, it loses air, gives up and drowns. There is no other outcome. No chance for survival, unless a human being spots and frees the animal. This death of untargeted species is called bycatch. A more accurate and formal definition of the term is, the unwanted fish and other marine creatures trapped by commercial fishing nets during fishing for a different species. The definition makes it sound so normal, ‘collateral damage’, unimportant. So, here are some statistics that will make an attempt to explain the impact of bycatch:
- According to some estimates, Global Bycatch may amount to 40% of the world’s catch, totaling 63 Billion pounds per year.
- In 2010, more than 3,400 dusky sharks were captured as bycatch in just two bottom longline fisheries in the southeast region of the U.S — even though it is illegal to deliberately catch them.
- Not only are millions of pounds of fish thrown away every day, but scientists estimate that as many as 650,000 whales, dolphins, and seals were killed around the world each year throughout the 1990s as a result of bycatch.
P.S. All this data is taken from ‘WASTED CATCH: UNSOLVED PROBLEMS IN U.S. FISHERIES’ by multiple authors and published by Oceana.
Bycatch is an undocumented killer of protected species. People do not know the impact of this accident. If you read this article till here, just share it or tell a friend what bycatch is. The more people know, the more space there is for a positive change.
Marine ecosystems need you to care, sign online petitions, read more about threats to our oceans. Educate yourself and others, our oceans need us, right now, let us take action before it is too late.
