1. Fisheries bycatch has been implicated in declines of many long-lived marine vertebrate populations, but bycatch impacts on these populations vary according to spatio-temporal overlap in fisheries operations and critical ontogenetic habitat, as well as to characteristics of fishing gear. 2. To provide a framework for comparing the relative impacts of different fisheries on populations of logg...

The objective of this paper is to describe the main characteristics of small-scale marine fisheries in the municipal district of Florianópolis (SC), the capital city of the state of Santa Catarina. We give information about the most captured species, the fishing fleet and fishing gear used. The dynamics of the activity is described, considering the kind of operation of the boats, alongside post...

Effects of gear characteristics on the presence of bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) in the catches of the purse-seine fishery of the eastern Pacific Overfishing of bigeye tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean has motivated a search for pratical means of reducing bigeye catch. We develop a classification algorithm for the presence/absence of bigeye in purse-seine sets on floating objects, the dominant m...

A key challenge in contemporary ecology and conservation is the accurate tracking of the spatial distribution of various human impacts, such as fishing. While coastal fisheries in national waters are closely monitored in some countries, existing maps of fishing effort elsewhere are fraught with uncertainty, especially in remote areas and the High Seas. Better understanding of the behavior of th...

Fishers, scientists, and resource managers have made substantial progress in reducing bycatch of sea turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals through physical modifications to fishing gear. Many bycatch-avoidance measures have been developed and tested successfully in controlled experiments, which have led to regulated implementation of modified or new fishing gear. Nevertheless, successful bycatc...

Multiple single case reports of asphyxiation in dolphins caused by fish lodged in the esophagus exist. However, the significance of this cause of mortality in a single population has not been documented. We performed a retrospective evaluation of pathology records from stranded bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) from the Indian River Lagoon to evaluate the impact of this cause of death on...

Individuals store energy to balance deficits in natural cycles; however, unnatural events can also lead to unbalanced energy budgets. Entanglement in fishing gear is one example of an unnatural but relatively common circumstance that imposes energetic demands of a similar order of magnitude and duration of life-history events such as migration and pregnancy in large whales. We present two compl...

Juvenile silky sharks Carcharhinus falciformis comprise the largest component of the incidental elasmobranch catch taken in tropical tuna purse seine fisheries. During a chartered cruise on board a tuna purse seine vessel conducting typical fishing operations we investigated the post-release survival and rates of interaction with fishing gear of incidentally captured silky sharks using a combin...

Marine debris is recognized as a major threat to biodiversity and can be found ubiquitously even in remote regions, including deep-sea environments. Isla del Coco National Park is known as one of the best protected areas around the world, a preferred diving destination, and is also renowned for large aggregations of pelagic species that attract illegal commercial fisheries. Despite its pristine...