A first of its kind tally lays out the annual cost of UK fishing nets to protected wildlife, and exposes a policy gap the government has been 'trialling' since 2019.
The numbers are in, and they are not a rough estimate anymore. A new report from the Wildlife and Countryside Link, the coalition of UK wildlife groups, says UK fishing nets kill more than 10,000 protected seabirds, more than 1,000 porpoises and dolphins, about 500 seals, more than 120 tonnes of protected sharks, skates and rays, and more than 1,000 Atlantic salmon every year, according to the BBC, which obtained the figures.
That tally reframes a long-running argument. For years, environmental groups have warned that the UK lacks coherent bycatch plans. They now have a count to anchor that warning in, and a specific regulatory friction to point at. Acoustic deterrent devices, known as pingers, are the leading candidate mitigation. Trials suggest they reduce entanglement. UK rules currently prevent inshore fishermen from putting them on their nets.
The gap between those two facts is the story. A government spokesperson told the BBC it was "committed" to "restoring oceans to good health" and has been trialling deterrents since 2019, the BBC reported. The Wildlife and Countryside Link report calls that pace slow and urges ministers to introduce bycatch action plans "urgently," along with remote electronic monitoring on every fishing vessel operating in English waters.
The case that turned this report into a news story is also a Cornish one. In April, a malnourished seal was found at Nanjizal Bay with fishing net still wrapped around its neck. The Cornish Seal Sanctuary treated the animal, named it Hot Cross Bun, and brought it close to release, according to the BBC. Spokesperson Grace Jones told the broadcaster the seal would carry the scars for life and that bycatch is not a one-off. She also widened the lens: "We have a fantastic fisheries industry, especially here in Cornwall. We don't want to see that go."
That line matters. It says the critique of UK bycatch policy is structural, not adversarial. Pingers are not a ban on fishing. They are a device that fishermen and conservationists both point to as effective, especially for cetaceans and seals. The rule blocking inshore deployment is a small, specific piece of UK law that inshore operators say stops them using a tool the government's own trials have flagged as promising.
Alessandra Bielli is leading an acoustic deterrent trial referenced in the BBC's reporting. The policy question her work raises is what happens when a trial produces evidence. Trialling since 2019 is a description of activity, not of deployment. Until pingers are available to the boats that fish closest to the affected species, the report's numbers will keep accumulating.
There is an international comparison the UK could draw on. The United States has long required pingers or similar deterrents in parts of its gill-net fishery, and Alaska has its own seabird bycatch rules. None of those regimes are perfect. They do, however, treat bycatch as a regulated cost of doing business rather than a problem to be studied indefinitely.
The two asks in the Wildlife and Countryside Link report are concrete. Bycatch action plans introduced urgently. Remote electronic monitoring on every English fishing vessel. The first would give ministers a deadline and a species-by-species framework. The second would make it possible to know which boats are taking which catch, including the protected species currently tallied by rescue, stranding, and observer reports.
What to watch next is whether the government treats the report as another data point in a five-year trial or as the basis for a deployment plan. The pinger rule is a lever that already exists. The numbers are now public. The question is whether Westminster moves before next year's tally looks the same.