Protecting Ocean Wildlife

Sustainable seafood means reducing the harm from fishing to sharks, marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds.

Hundreds of thousands of sharks, whales and dolphins, sea turtles, and seabirds are harmed or killed in commercial fishing each year. “Bycatch,” the catch of non-target species, is the biggest, single threat to the sustainability of marine fisheries.

There are practical solutions

Key strategies for reducing bycatch include:

Adoption of best practices
More fishery observers
Development of new technologies.

Sea turtle and shark swimming over reef with fish

Check out the Bycatch Solutions Hub

The Hub is a first-of-its-kind online tool just for the seafood industry, highlighting voluntary, industry-led adoption of best practices and innovations to protect ocean wildlife, and connecting companies and innovators around the world.

Visit the Hub

Gear Innovation in Lobster and Crab Fisheries

Gear Innovation

The adoption of ropeless, or on-demand, fishing technologies can substantially reduce the risk of entanglement for critically endangered marine mammals, and allow fishing and whales to co-exist.

More about ropeless gear innovation

Reducing bycatch in longline tuna fisheries

Reducing bycatch in Pacific Ocean longline tuna fisheries

New research from SFP highlights the impacts of tuna longline fishing on vulnerable ocean wildlife in the Western Central Pacific Ocean and recommends actions for buyers of longline-caught tuna.

More on reducing bycatch in tuna fisheries

Solve My Bycatch Problem tool

Solve My Bycatch Problem Tool

Our interactive Solve My Bycatch Problem tool allows users to find and evaluate various bycatch solutions, based on their relevance to specific species, effectiveness, ease of implementation, and cost.

Solve My Bycatch Problem tool

Bycatch Audits

Bycatch Audits

SFP partners with Birdlife International and Whale and Dolphin Conservation to conduct bycatch audits of major retailers’ seafood supply chains, to identify those source fisheries that present significant bycatch risks and identify actions the retailers can take to address those risks.

Why retailers should care about bycatch

Bycatch threatens seafood retailers and the entire supply chain.

Seafood production contributing to the decline of wildlife violates sustainable sourcing and conservation commitments.
Engaging in practices that harm ocean wildlife generates negative reactions, unwanted public attention, and scrutiny by policy makers.
Consumers care about conservation. Public opinion research shows shoppers overwhelmingly think retailers should make sure their seafood does not harm ocean wildlife — especially getting producers to use less damaging ways to fish.

Highlights

Reducing Bycatch in Pacific Ocean Longline Tuna Fisheries

New research from SFP highlights the impacts of commercial tuna longline fishing on endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) species in the Western Central Pacific Ocean, and recommends actions that buyers of longline-caught canned and fresh/frozen tuna can take to reverse the decline of sharks, sea turtles, and seabirds in the region.
Protecting whales and ensuring a sustainable future for lobster and crab fisheries

Ropeless fishing technologies can substantially reduce the risk of entanglement for the Critically Endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Protecting Sea Turtles in the Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Fishery

Fishery improvement projects are reducing the number of sea turtles caught in shrimp nets through provisions for the use of turtle excluder devices.
Asda’s Commitment to Addressing Bycatch Issues in its Source Fisheries

Based on the results of a bycatch audit by SFP, UK supermarket Asda committed to addressing risks to sharks, seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals in its source fisheries.