Good Practices Handling Guides

The incidental capture of vulnerable species like sea turtles, sharks and rays, marine mammals, sea birds and corals & sponges, also known as “Bycatch” is a key conservation issue for the Mediterranean.

Marine species get trapped in fishing gear and can be injured or even die. Moreover, fishers suffer reduced quality of target catch, fuel loss and fishing gear damage due to bycatch.

Training the fishing community on how to safely release incidentally caught animals is really important for their abundance in marine ecosystems and for marine biodiversity.

One of the goals of “Medbycatch” project is to advocate to fishers and to train them to safely release bycaught animals back into their natural environment, thus preserving biodiversity and marine life.

For this, we have developed specific tools to be distributed to the fishing community in Turkey, Tunisia and Morocco.

The “Good Practice Handling Guides” of incidentally caught vulnerable marine species intend to provide simple and practical advice on how to release an animal trapped in fishing gear.

Please see them below: