18 December 2025: New publication investigates by-catch of common minke whales in Norwegian demersal trawl and longline fisheries.
Ending the year on a positive note, the latest publication in Volume 14 of NAMMCO Scientific Publications estimates low by-catch rates for minke whales in some fishing gears around Norway. The paper, by André Moan and Arne Bjørge, is titled “By-catch of common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) in Norwegian demersal trawl and longline fisheries, 2011–2020”. Using by-catch records from Norway’s High Seas Reference Fleet, the authors extrapolated to all the fishing effort for vessels over 15 m in length and for fishing gears represented by the Reference Fleet (trawlers, longlines, purse seine, Danish seine, and gillnets). They calculated a total of 57 minke whales by-caught over the ten-year period studied.
Acknowledging that undocumented or unquantified by-catch may well exist in other fishing gears, the authors estimate that documented by-catch is only about 0.5% of the sustainable removal level. They highlight, however, that the welfare of by-caught animals is still an issue, even if population sustainability is not.