New guide to reducing bycatch goes online The new website,
accessed through WWF’s familiar www.panda.org portal, aims to
take fishers, consumers and those simply concerned, through the
whole bycatch story, from problems to proven or potential
solutions. “Bycatch costs fishers time and money,” said Amanda
Nickson, Head of WWF’s Bycatch Initiative. “It contributes to
the already critical problem of over-fishing, it jeopardizes
future revenue, jobs and long-term food security. “It is also a
major killer of marine wildlife. How many more reasons do you
need to change the way we fish?” Each year, many millions of
tonnes of marine animals such as turtles, whales, dolphins,
sharks, and seabirds, right through to juvenile fish, corals,
crabs and starfish etc are caught by modern, indiscriminate yet
highly efficient fishing gear and thrown back into the water
(‘discarded’), dead or dying. In the tropical shrimp trawl
fisheries, for example, bycatch may outweigh the shrimp catch by
20 to 1 or more, according the UN Foo