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• About Sea Turtles
  • Loggerhead
  • Leatherback
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  • Kemp's Ridley
  • Olive Ridley
  • Hawksbill
  • Flatback
• Sea Turtle Legislation
• Threats
  • Fishing Gear
    • Trawls
    • Longlines
    • Purse Seines
    • Gillnets
    • Pound Nets
  • Climate Change
  • Other Threats
• Solution
  • Bycatch Reduction
    • Gear Modifications
      • TEDs (Turtle Excluder Devices)
    • Time/Area Management
      • Gillnets
      • Sea Turtle Tagging
      • Key Loggerhead Habitat
  • Reducing Emissions
  • Oceana's Role
    • Reducing Bycatch
    • Protecting habitat
    • Lobbying
    • International Cooperation
• Victories
• What You Can Do
• Turtle Cam

Bycatch or wasted catch, refers to all the ocean's living things that commercial and recreational fishermen harm or kill even though they don't intend to catch them. Bycatch includes:

• The incidental catch or injury of non-targeted species;
• Unobserved deaths caused by fishing, such as the entanglement and death of dolphin or other species in fishing nets that have been lost or discarded in the ocean; and
• Marine invertebrates - corals, sponges, anemones - that live on the ocean floor and are caught during bottom trawling, a fishing method that drags huge nets across the ocean floor.

Efforts must be taken to reduce sea turtle bycatch, or the incidental catch of sea turtles by fishing gear. In addition, due to threats from climate change, the reduction of carbon emissions is another important step. Oceana works to achieve both solutions.