bycatchawareness

Bycatch is when you catch marine mammals unintentionally. The marine mammals that get caught are dolphins, sharks, seabirds and other sea life.

Many companies try to make new fishing methods that reduce bycatch such as new trawling methods. But they cost more money and many other poor countries will not use them.

The most common fishing method that leads to bycatch is deep sea trawling, long lining, commercial gillnetting, recreational gillnetting and customary gillnetting. The other threats are pollution, boat strikes, oil and gas exploration, oil and gas mining and sand mining. The commercial gillnets can be up to 3,000 meters long! However amateur gillnets can get up to 60 meters.

The estimated death toll of maui’s dolphins 2.48 maui’s dolphins per year, maui’s dolphins can cope with 1 death every 10-23 years, but fishing kills 5 of them every year 75 times the sustainable limit. The dolphins breeding age is around 6-9 years and they can live up to 20-25 years, so that’s 1 new individual dolphin each year. Some say in 2022 there will be no maui’s dolphins because they will all be extinct Saving Maui’s is a race against time.