Abstract

Discarding by fisheries is one of the most wasteful human marine activities, yet we have few estimates of its scale. Reliable estimates of global discards are essential for sustainable fisheries management. Using United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization databases on country-specific landings, we estimated the discard rate and magnitude for global marine and estuarine capture fisheries using fishery-specific discard rates derived from direct observations and global gear-specific discard rates estimated within a Bayesian modelling framework. An estimated 9.1 million tonnes are discarded annually (95% uncertainty interval: 7–16 M t)—or 10.8% of the global catch (95% UI: 10–12%). Encouragingly, this is about half of the annual global discard rate estimated in the late 1980s. Trawl fisheries, especially demersal otter trawls, warrant intensified efforts to reduce discards. Periodic benchmarks of global discards are needed to assess the performance of reduction efforts.

Details

Title
Benchmarking global fisheries discards
Author
Gilman, E 1 ; Perez, Roda A 2 ; Huntington, T 3 ; Kennelly, S J 4 ; Suuronen, P 5 ; Chaloupka, M 6 ; Medley P A H 7 

 Pelagic Ecosystems Research Group, Honolulu, USA 
 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy (GRID:grid.420153.1) (ISNI:0000 0004 1937 0300) 
 Poseidon Aquatic Resources Management Ltd., Lymington, UK (GRID:grid.420153.1) 
 IC Independent Consulting, Sydney, Australia (GRID:grid.493005.b) 
 Natural Resources Institute Finland, Helsinki, Finland (GRID:grid.22642.30) (ISNI:0000 0004 4668 6757) 
 University of Queensland, Ecological Modelling Services Pty Ltd and Marine Spatial Ecology Lab, Brisbane, Australia (GRID:grid.1003.2) (ISNI:0000 0000 9320 7537) 
 Poseidon Aquatic Resources Management Ltd., Lymington, UK (GRID:grid.1003.2) 
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2435634618
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.