California swordfish fishery: Maximizing the catch rate of a target species simultaneously minimizes bycatch rates

See also Scales et al 2019 response to this article.

Marine megafauna represent a key component of ocean condition and functioning. However, these species are becoming increasingly threatened by incidental capture in nontarget fisheries as bycatch. Although several studies have investigated spatial and temporal hotspots for bycatch, few have examined the fundamental physical drivers that underlie observed patterns. In PNAS, Scales et al. (1) address this gap by identifying high-resolution Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) in ocean surface velocity fields and by quantifying their influence on the likelihood of marine megafauna bycatch in a swordfish fishery operating within the California Current System. The sophisticated approach and the results presented by Scales et al. (1) expand our view of ecological processes governing fisheries.