Bycatch and Discards Management

Bycatch is any catch other than the intended target species, and discards are the portion of total catch, target or bycatch, thrown back dead or dying because it is undersized, over quota, or commercially worthless, together representing a documented global loss on the order of several million tonnes annually that contributes nothing to food supply or farmer income. Management tools attack the problem at the gear level, with turtle excluder devices, bycatch reduction panels, circle hooks, and net mesh regulation each targeted at a specific bycatch pathway, and at the policy level, with discard bans (notably the EU's landing obligation) forcing vessels to land and count catch they would previously have thrown back, making the true scale of bycatch visible for the first time in many fisheries. Observer and electronic monitoring data is the only reliable way to quantify discard rates, since self-reported logs systematically undercount them. For aquaculture-adjacent supply chains, discard-derived byproduct (bycatch too small or low-value for direct sale) is a recognized, if controversial, input to fishmeal and fish oil production, linking wild-capture bycatch management directly to the sustainability credentials of farmed feed.