Live-capture rates of albatrosses and petrels in fisheries, and subsequent survival

The majority of seabird bycatch in most longline fisheries involves mortality during setting. However, many birds can be hooked or entangled during hauling or, less frequently, at the end of setting, and brought onto the vessel alive. As more fisheries adopt night setting to mitigate bycatch, the unintended consequence may be an increase in live captures. Vesselbased monitoring is patchy, but where recorded, the number of seabirds brought on board that are caught alive and released, rather than dead, typically exceeds 10%. The proportion that later die from their injuries is unknown, which is a major complication when quantifying impacts of bycatch on seabird populations.