Sustainable Fisheries Management and Discard Mitigation

Sustainable fisheries management seeks to balance the long-term productivity of marine stocks with ecological integrity and economic viability. A primary challenge is the high volume of unwanted catch—discarded fish and invertebrates returned to the sea, often dead or dying—which undermines resource efficiency and ecosystem health. Discard mitigation encompasses regulatory measures, gear modifications, monitoring tools and market incentives designed to reduce unwanted bycatch and promote full utilisation of catch. Key strategies include improving selectivity of fishing gear to avoid non-target species and undersized individuals, implementing landing obligations that require all catch to be retained, and deploying electronic monitoring systems to ensure compliance. Complementary approaches focus on valorisation of processing by-products through novel biorefinery and digital-technology solutions. Effectively integrating these measures requires adaptive management frameworks that account for ecological interactions, economic trade-offs and social acceptance among fishers. Globally, discard reduction contributes to more accurate stock assessments, supports the restoration of overfished populations and diminishes impacts on marine scavengers and habitat structure. Practical applications range from region-specific technical fixes—such as selective trawl modifications—to broad policy reforms including discard bans and incentive-based schemes. By combining empirical benchmarks, ecosystem-based modelling and stakeholder engagement, the field is progressing towards fisheries governance that secures both food security and marine biodiversity.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Global estimates of discard rates have been refined through comprehensive analysis of national landing records combined with fishery- and gear-specific discard parameters derived from observation and Bayesian modelling. These benchmarks reveal an overall decline in discarded biomass over recent decades but highlight persistent hotspots in trawl fisheries, especially demersal otter trawls, where discard proportions remain high. Ecosystem-model simulations further demonstrate that simply landing all catch without altering fishing practices can trigger unintended declines in scavenger populations and benthic communities, whereas coupling landing obligations with improved gear selectivity can initiate trophic cascades that bolster both target stocks and non-target predators. Together, these studies underscore the need for integrated measures that align catch retention rules with proactive reductions in unwanted capture.

Sustainable Fisheries Management and Discard Mitigation publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in sustainable fisheries management and discard mitigation across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Discard: The portion of catch returned to the sea, often through regulatory exemption or no economic value, typically resulting in mortality.

Bycatch: Non-target species incidentally captured during fishing operations, which may be retained or discarded.

Landing obligation: A regulatory requirement that obliges fishers to retain all legally caught species, thereby discouraging discards.

Electronic monitoring: Use of on-board cameras and sensors to record fishing activities for independent verification of catch and bycatch.

Ghost fishing: Continued catch by lost or abandoned fishing gear that entraps and kills marine organisms.

Selectivity: The ability of fishing gear to target desired species and sizes while minimising capture of non-target or undersized individuals.

References

1. Use of industry 4.0 technologies to reduce and valorize seafood waste and by-products: A narrative review on current knowledge. Current Research in Food Science (2023).
2. Unseen annihilation: Illegal fishing practices and nautical patrol. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2023).
3. The economic impacts of introducing biodegradable fishing gear as a ghost fishing mitigation in the English Channel static gear fishery. Marine Pollution Bulletin (2023).
4. Electronic monitoring in fisheries: Lessons from global experiences and future opportunities. Fish and Fisheries (2019).
5. A Review of the European Union Landing Obligation Focusing on Its Implications for Fisheries and the Environment. Sustainability (2018).
6. Benchmarking global fisheries discards. Scientific Reports (2020).
7. Cascading ecological effects of eliminating fishery discards. Nature Communications (2014).