Industrial pelagic fisheries in the East Central Atlantic Ocean (ECAO) are a crucial source of economic activity for the EU, with EU-flagged vessels catching approximately 150,000 tons of fish annually. However, these fishing practices also lead to significant bycatch, the unintentional capture of non-target species, which includes various endangered, threatened, and protected species (ETPS) such as seabirds, sea turtles, cetaceans, and sharks. Bycatch can constitute about 40% of global marine catches, posing a severe threat to marine megafauna, which are particularly vulnerable due to their life-history traits like slow growth and low fecundity. The ECAO, a biodiversity hotspot, is heavily exploited by industrial fisheries from over 50 countries, leading to high bycatch rates and contributing to the decline of many ETPS. EU-flagged vessels, responsible for a significant portion of the fishing effort, have a substantial role in addressing this issue.

The REDUCE project will unify stakeholder efforts and utilize an interdisciplinary scientific approach to reduce bycatch of marine megafauna and inform sustainable fishery management in the ECAO. The diagnosis and integration of bycatch data across all major industrial European fleets in the region, linked with fishing effort and the spatiotemporal distribution of the species, will provide a systematic approach to jointly assess and tackle policy challenges.

The expansion and improvement of observer programs and the advances in electronic monitoring and automated machine learning systems will enable species-specific and high-resolution data of marine megafauna bycatch. Satellite tracking of selected species combined with AIS fishery data in concurrent time will allow understanding key drivers of interactions and infer political responsibilities, while the deployment of novel bio-loggers will allow for a better understanding of their post-release mortality. Sightings, fishery catches and tracking data on marine megafauna will be combined to provide a step-change in predictive habitat mapping approaches to understand overlap and bycatch risk from local to basin-scales.

The combination of time-series of sightings, fishery catches, strandings, satellite tracking and capture-mark-recapture studies, will provide an unprecedented view on megafauna hotspots and the risks and impacts of bycatch, boosting marine spatial planning for pelagic waters. Assessment and testing of mitigation measures will identify key approaches to significantly reduce bycatch in the region. Innovative and efficient data handling, sharing and publishing will establish an integrated approach to the bycatch data community. Capacity and cooperation between science, fishery industry and policymakers bordering ECAO will be boosted by joint multi-disciplinary workshops, scientific training and monitoring events.