Toothed whale and shark depredation and bycatch in the longline fishery of French Polynesia

Marine megafauna feeding on fishery catches (depredation) or being incidentally caught on fishing gear (bycatch) have become important issues. Their socioeconomic and conservation stakes have been increasingly studied across the world fisheries. They remain understudied in the Pacific Ocean, where longline tuna fisheries reported such interactions. In this study, we provide the first assessment of bycatch and depredation by sharks and odontocetes on longlines in French Polynesia between 2000 and 2018, using data from observers reporting, captains’ logbooks, questionnaires and additional monitoring by authors during three fishing trip. We found that less than 2% of the catch had been depredated, and that shark depredation was more common than odontocete depredation. Shark bycatch was important (20,000 sharks annually, 0.5 shark every 1000 hooks) and odontocete bycatch seemed low (13 occurrences in 18 years), though we identified clear reporting flaws. We discuss the range of uncertainty associated with our assessment, based on the current reporting systems, and the potential consequences of depredation and bycatch on tuna fisheries, as well as on shark and odontocete populations in French Polynesia

Whales in warming water: Assessing breeding habitat diversity and adaptability in Oceania's changing climate

International audienc

Global COVID-19 lockdown highlights humans as both threats and custodians of the environment

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness