COMMENTARY Quantifying seabird bycatch: where do we go from here?

doi:10.1111/j.1469-1795.2008.00197.x Bycatch of seabirds in offshore commercial fisheries has long been recognized as a serious conservation issue (e.g. Brothers, 1991; Brothers, Cooper & Løkkeborg, 1999), but until recently the problem was principally associated with industrial longline gear. In fact, pelagic seabird bycatch is very much a multi-gear problem. Watkins, Petersen & Ryan (2008) have presented the latest in a string of recent case studies documenting geographically widespread and sometimes severe levels of seabird bycatch in industrial trawl fisheries throughout the Southern Hemispher