August 2025

The Society for Marine Mammalogy holds regular, biennial, international meetings to enhance collaboration, share ideas, and improve the quality of research on marine mammals within the scientific community. The 2019 biennial meeting will be held jointly with the European Cetacean Society in a World Marine Mammal Science Conference. This conference will be held in Barcelona, […]

For many years Maine lobster fishermen have maintained that their gear is not involved in right whale entanglements. Nevertheless, many scientists believed that this had more to do with cryptic entanglements in which very few entanglements are observed and thus there would not be an opportunity to study from where the entangling gear originated. The […]

A Nordmore sorting grid, which has been required in the Gulf of Maine Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) trawl fishery since 1992, was found to decrease bycatch of 8 groundfish species when observed tows before and after the grate requirement were compared. Catch rates of shrimp increased possibly due to higher catch rates of large shrimp.

This is a meta-analysis that quantified the effects of 42 technical measures on the target catch and the bycatch of seabirds, elasmobranchs, marine mammals and sea turtles, evaluating which methods were most effective at mitigating bycatch of each fauna group. Overall, mitigation methods reduced bycatch while having no statistically significant effect on the target catch, […]

In 2022, Mexican authorities placed hundreds of concrete blocks with entangling metal hooks to discourage gill net use; as a result, there has been a substantial decline in gill net use in the area, and healthy vaquitas have been observed. However, in order to fully protect the vaquita from extinction, more of the population’s distribution […]

The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium’s 2018 annual meeting is November 7-8, 2018. At this meeting, various stakeholders convene to discuss and share research, new techniques, management strategies, and other facets of right whale conservation. This is the only opportunity for this gathering and sharing of information and so is invaluable to the conservation of […]

Fishing is an important economic mainstay of New England, and part of its cultural heritage. North Atlantic right whales are a critical natural component of the region’s coastal waters. Where the two meet entanglements happen, mainly as whales become wrapped in buoy ropes used to locate and haul pots resting on the seafloor. Two unlikely […]

Most bycatch reduction techniques so far implemented around the world have been in commercial fisheries within developed countries, which have relatively strong regulatory and enforcement capacity, and that generally can absorb increased expenses or reduced revenue from regulated modifications to fishing methods. For several years, the NEAq has been working with local fishermen, the Argentinian […]

Underwater setting chutes, blue-dyed bait, and side-sets each reduced the bycatch of seabirds (Laysan and black-footed albatross and short-tailed shearwater) in the Hawaiian longline tuna and swordfish fisheries. Side-sets showed the most promise for a bycatch mitigation technique while blue-dyed bait was the least effective at reducing seabird bycatch and shows the least promise of […]

Bird-scaring lines and an underwater setting funnel reduced seabird bycatch in longlines off the coast of Norway. Catch of haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), torsk (Brosme brosme), and ling (Molva molva) increased with use of the underwater setting funnel.

This study investigated the effectiveness of retention bans for reducing shark mortality in longline and gillnet fisheries, as reported in 160 relevant studies across 341 shark species. Results suggest that retention bans can reduce shark mortality when averaged across all species, but that species with lower intrinsic population growth rates benefit less from a retention […]

A new toothless dredge design called the “Newhaven” was tested in the Isle of Man queen scallop fishery, to determine it’s effect on both catch and bycatch.  This new dredge design caught significantly more queen scallops compared to the traditional tooth dredge.   However, there was no significant difference between the abundance of bycatch between […]

Tests were conducted to determine if twin trawl nets containing a Turtle Excluder Device (TED) and a Popeye Fishbox caught less bycatch then nets fitted only with a TED. Nets that had the Popeye Fishbox located 70 meshes from the codend draw strings had a 48% reduction in the weight of small bycatch, an 87% […]

Sea otters are caught and drowned in fishing pots and traps.  Live California sea otters were exposed to finfish traps, lobster traps, and mock Dungeness crab traps in captive trials.  Researchers found that the otters attempted to enter the circular and rectangular fyke openings and some became entrapped.  They determined that a 3×9 inch opening, rather […]