About

Problem Statement

Bycatch is the greatest human threat to small cetaceans. Animals get caught in many of the most common fishing gears, including nets, longlines, trawls, pots and traps. Through our approach and toolkit, we intend to "get to the bottom of bycatch" in SE Asia and beyond.

• Flexible, transferable, open-source tools to support spatial planning and decision-making
• Turn information into action by characterizing bycatch risk based on animal distribution, abundance and population structure, fisheries effort and interaction rates.
• Tips for using existing data effectively and responsibly and improve their quality over time.

Our Partners

Our multinational team of scientists, analysts and community-relations specialists are working with in-country partners and stakeholders to co-produce a toolkit that identifies management strategies to mitigate risk of bycatch.

We thank the following organizations for supporting this research:

• The MareCet Research Organization
• Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) of Thailand
• Sarawak Dolphin Project
• Kien Giang Biosphere Reserve
• Vietnam Marine Mammal Network
• Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
• Southern Institute of Ecology (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology)

Our Goals

Using a science-policy approach, our toolkit is designed for practitioners to create a localized bycatch risk assessment (ByRA).

1. Identify and quantify factors that contribute to fisheries bycatch in specific locations with varying amounts of existing data.
2. Create a spatially and temporally explicit database of the distribution of marine mammals, fisheries effort and interaction rates, and other human factors.
3. Integrate socio-ecological data into a transferable, open-source tool that supports spatial planning and decision-making to reduce bycatch.