Reducing Bycatch of Marine Megafauna Through Interfishery Conservation Offsets

Fisheries bycatch is a leading threat to marine megafauna worldwide. Changes in fishing gear and techniques have resulted in substantial reductions in bycatch in some industrial fleets. Ubiquitous small-scale fisheries can jeopardize marine megafauna populations, but scarce resources generally limit mitigation of their bycatch. Large disparities in revenue, bycatch rates, and mitigation costs between industrial and small-scale fleets can offer powerful leverage for cost-effectively reducing bycatch through interfishery conservation offsets. High-revenue, low-bycatch industrial fleets that have exhausted avoidance and mitigation strategies could offset their residual bycatch by transferring capital to fund and audit measurable mitigation in high-bycatch, small-scale fleets. There is a range of regulatory, reputational, and economic incentives for both small-scale and industrial fleets to participate. With offsets increasingly considered as a management option, we examine the conditions and precautions under which this variety could function. We use bycatch of the endangered Pacific loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) in both the Hawaiian long-line fleet and Mexican small-scale fleets as a case study to illustrate the conservation potential of interfishery conservation offsets.