Acoustic alarms reduce porpoise mortality

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The most serious danger to dolphins and porpoises around the world is the threat from various forms of gill-net fishing. One potential way to reduce the number of deaths of marine mammals is the use of active acoustic alarms to warn animals about the presence of nets1. Until now, acoustic alarms have not been tested in field experiments with sufficient statistical power2. Here we describe a field experiment showing that acoustic alarms are effective at reducing the number of deaths of harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) in sink gill-nets.