Photo by Jack White

Over 10,000 seabirds, more than 1,000 dolphins and porpoises, approximately 500 seals, over 120 tonnes of protected sharks, skates and rays, and more than 1,000 endangered Atlantic salmon are being killed as bycatch in UK waters every year. Those are the headline findings of Hidden in the haul: The true scale of bycatch, a new report from Wildlife and Countryside Link (WCL), the largest environmental coalition in England, published in June 2026.

The report is the first to collate bycatch data across species groups for UK waters. Its authors warn the figures almost certainly underestimate the true toll, given severe gaps in monitoring, recording and reporting.

A crisis hidden beneath the waves

Bycatch, the incidental capture of non-target species in commercial fishing gear, occurs because modern fishing equipment does not discriminate between target fish and other wildlife. Nets dragged through the water sweep up everything too large to pass through the mesh. Static nets, which hang like curtains in the water column or lie along the seabed, snag seabirds, porpoises, seals and protected fish as well as commercially valuable catch. Long lines of hooks can equally catch endangered sharks and diving birds.

Ruth Williams, Head of Marine Conservation at The Wildlife Trusts, described bycatch as a silent crisis that has persisted beneath the waves for decades, causing suffering, driving population decline and threatening the health of UK seas.

Current government-led monitoring programmes cover only a fraction of fishing effort: average annual observation coverage stands at just 2.4% of midwater trawl fishing days, 1.2% for static net fishing and 0.7% for seabed trawl fishing, with some gear types monitored at less than 0.1%. This means a significant proportion of bycatch goes entirely unrecorded. Monitoring also covers only UK-registered vessels, meaning deaths caused by foreign boats fishing in UK waters are not captured at all.

The scale of underreporting is further illustrated by a freedom of information request cited in the report: since 2021, when fishers became legally required to report marine mammal bycatch to the Marine Management Organisation, just nine marine mammals have been reported as bycaught, against a background of thousands estimated to have died in that period.

Species by species

Among cetaceans, harbour porpoise bycatch estimates in the Greater North Sea and Irish and Celtic Seas exceed safe population thresholds by 3.7 times and almost 10 times respectively, according to OSPAR calculations. Bycaught cetaceans typically asphyxiate in nets, a process the report describes as protracted and likely to cause extreme suffering. The report also estimates around six humpback whales and 30 minke whales are caught each year in Scottish creel fishery ropes, the lines connecting small boats to pots used to trap crabs and lobsters.

For seabirds, in English waters gillnets carry the highest bycatch risk. Globally, gillnet fisheries are estimated to kill over 400,000 seabirds per year, and gillnetting is widespread off the English coast, yet there are currently no mandatory mitigation measures in place for this gear type.

Atlantic salmon, now classified as Endangered on the IUCN Red List following a 30-50% decline in British populations since 2006, face bycatch in pelagic trawls, static nets and other gear types. The report estimates over 1,000 are caught annually by UK boats in the north-east mackerel fishery alone. Despite their protected status, Atlantic salmon were only added to the ICES Working Group on Bycatch of Protected Species in 2025.

For sharks, skates and rays, the report highlights a culture of systemic underreporting, with widespread failure to comply with mandatory bycatch recording requirements. The headline figure of over 120 tonnes of critically endangered blue skate, porbeagle and white skate bycaught per year was extracted from self-reported discard data held by the Marine Management Organisation, meaning the true figure is almost certainly higher.

Solutions exist

The good news identified by the report is that practical fixes are available. In Filey Bay on the Yorkshire coast, a collaboration between fishers and the RSPB reduced seabird deaths from around 700 a year to just four or five through simple changes to fishing gear, including the adoption of heavier nets. In Scottish waters, early trials of weighted creel ropes have shown promise in reducing entanglements of whales and other large marine animals, with the majority of fishers involved welcoming the approach.

Richard Benwell, Chief Executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “Thousands of animals die every year in UK waters because of avoidable fishing deaths. From razorbills and dolphins to endangered salmon and sharks, the scale of destruction exposed in this report is shocking, with animals dying in awful and unnecessary ways. To protect marine wildlife, Ministers must finally deliver strong bycatch action plans, backed by strict mandatory monitoring and enforcement, before more wildlife is pushed closer to extinction.”

Sarah Dolman, Senior Ocean Campaigner at EIA UK, pointed to a decade-long failure of implementation: “The UK government has the opportunity to lead the global standard to prevent bycatch, but despite knowing about and studying bycatch for decades, has so far failed to implement and enforce existing laws to protect marine wildlife from entanglement.”

What the report demands

WCL’s central demands are two-fold. First, the government should publish species-specific Bycatch Action Plans by the end of 2027, with quantitative and time-bound targets for bycatch reduction. Second, remote electronic monitoring (REM), combining GPS, video and gear-sensor technology, should be made mandatory on all fishing vessels operating in English waters, including those under 10 metres in length. Smaller vessels are responsible for the majority of static net fishing, the gear type most strongly associated with bycatch deaths, yet the government’s current plans exempt them from REM requirements.

The Fisheries Act 2020 already requires UK and devolved governments to minimise and, where possible, eliminate incidental catches of sensitive species. The Marine Strategy Regulations 2010 required Good Environmental Status for UK seas to be achieved by 2020. The Office for Environmental Protection has already identified potential failures to comply with environmental law in this area and put these to Defra in an information notice. Despite a 2023 parliamentary committee recommendation that Defra publish a bycatch action plan with targets and timelines by the end of that year, no such plan yet exists.

Hannah Rudd, head of marine at the Angling Trust, highlighted that the crisis extended beyond charismatic megafauna: “The test of whether we mean what we say about ecosystem-based, just fisheries management is not how we treat the gannet and the dolphin, who have our sympathy already – and who, even with it, are still dying in numbers we have failed to bring down. It is whether we extend the same seriousness to the fish with no glamour at all.”

Industry context

No formal response to Hidden in the haul had been issued by major fishing industry bodies at the time of publication. However, the NFFO has consistently argued that “progress comes through partnership and pragmatism, not polarisation,” pointing to collaborative initiatives such as Clean Catch UK – a Defra-funded programme bringing together fishermen, scientists and NGOs to develop practical bycatch solutions – as evidence of good faith engagement. The WCL report itself acknowledges that for many in the fishing industry, bycatch is “a distressing and unwanted outcome,” and conservationists have been at pains to frame the issue as one requiring government support for fishers to transition to lower-risk gear, rather than a case of industry wrongdoing.