Benchmarking global fisheries discards

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.