The longline fishery is aptly named. Fishermen will unroll a
surface longline into the ocean that can extend for 40 miles and
is segmented with baited hooks and buoys. They’ll let it float
for a number of hours, hooking whatever swims along that has a
taste for the bait. Then the hooks are emptied of their catch as
the line is rewound onto a big spool on the back of the fishing
boat. Anything the fishermen want to sell is kept onboard, and
anything caught incidentally, known as bycatch, is typically
thrown over, dead or alive. In the Gulf of Mexico, many
fishermen use longlines to fish for swordfish and yellowfin
tuna, but they also end up catching Atlantic bluefin tuna, among
other species. The International Union for Conservation of
Nature lists the Atlantic bluefin as a threatened species and
the Gulf of Mexico is known to be one of its spawning grounds,
so purposefully fishing for the species has been forbidden in
the gulf since 1982. However, the fishermen are allowed to catch
some bluefins while fishing