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The total volume of captures worldwide is believed to be much higher because many fisheries do not report the amount of their discards; in other cases, many captures that do not have commercial value are not even considered discards and therefore are not registered at all.

Dolphins, whales, turtles, sharks, marine birds, coral and a multitude of endangered or threatened species are accidentally captured by the thousands every year.

The 20 most wasteful fisheries in the world.

Nine of the 20 areas around the world with the highest amounts of fish discarded at sea (in terms of the numbers of fish discarded compared to the number landed) can be found in the North-East Atlantic. Six of these are fisheries worked by trawlers and the other three are worked by vessels that use another trawling technique: the “Danish seine”.

The FAO estimated that the value of discards in demersal fisheries in the North Sea in 1997 was close to 700 million euros (similar to the value of what was actually landed). Other partial estimates on this sea throw up figures of some 100 million euros in losses generated in haddock fisheries.

The survival rate of fish that manage to escape from the nets thanks to improved technologies (grilles, bigger mesh openings, etc.), differs between species. In some cases, this could be as low as 10%, which means that mortality from trawling is far higher than the volume of catches landed. The trawl bag, chains, weights and, particularly, the enormously heavy doors, can all penetrate the sea bed by several centimetres (up to 30 cm), depending on the sediment and the fishing gear used, destroying benthonic ecosystems. The width of the scars left behind by bottom trawling can measure between 0.5 and 6 m.

Many of the non-target species in serious danger are the seaturtles and sharks.