Marine wildlife stranding is a global phenomenon, and for some taxonomic groups, these events are well monitored and documented. Although sharks are among the most threatened vertebrates, strandings have historically been neglected, with little information on this topic currently available. To address this knowledge gap, a systematic review on scientific publications from indexed databases, multimedia material and citizen scie...

For many years, tremendous effort has been dedicated to developing new industrial tuna fisheries, while their adverse impacts on threatened marine species have received relatively little attention. In tuna fisheries, bycatch is the major anthropogenic threat to marine megafauna in general, particularly sharks. Research on the development of gear technology for bycatch reduction and potential mitigation measures helped tuna Reg...

Blue shark ( Prionace glauca ) is amongst the most abundant shark species in international trade, however this highly migratory species has little effective management and the need for spatio-temporal strategies increases, possibly involving the most vulnerable stage or sex classes. We combined 265,595 blue shark observations (capture or satellite tag) with environmental data to present the first global-scale analysis of speci...

Derelict fishing gear is a highly visible source of marine plastic pollution, causing mortality and ecosystem degradation with uncertain long‐term consequences. The quantity of derelict gear entering the oceans remains unknown because of heterogeneity in fishing gear and effort, as well as inadequate monitoring. Prior studies have been limited in scope to specific fisheries and regions, and large‐scale estimates lack an empiri...

Fisheries can profoundly affect bycatch species with ‘slow’ life history traits. Managing bait type offers one tool to control species selectivity. Different species and sizes of marine predators have different prey, and hence bait, preferences. This preference is a function of a bait’s chemical, visual, acoustic and textural characteristics and size, and for seabirds the effect on hook sink rate is also important. We conducte...

To gain a better understanding of the trophic ecology of Pacific blue marlin Makaira nigricans off eastern Taiwan, nitrogen and carbon stable isotopes (δ 15 N and δ 13 C) and Bayesian mixing models were used to explore trophic dynamics and potential ontogenetic feeding shifts across M. nigricans of different size classes. Makaira nigricans samples from east of Taiwan ( n = 213) and Palau ( n = 37), as well as their prey ( n =...

Robust assessments of the effects of fishing require accounting for components of fishing mortality, including post‐release fishing mortality ( F r ). Random‐effects meta‐analysis synthesized F r in seven pelagic shark species captured, tagged and released with 401 pop‐up satellite archival tags compiled from 33 studies and three gears (longline, purse‐seine, rod & reel). The majority of F r outcomes occurred within days of re...

Spatial and temporal trends of sailfish catch rates in the southwestern and equatorial A tlantic O cean in relation to environmental variables were investigated using generalized additive models and fishery‐dependent data. Two generalized additive models were fit: (i) ‘spatio‐temporal’, including only latitude, longitude, month, and year; and (ii) ‘oceanographic’, including sea surface temperature ( SST ), chlorophyll‐ a conce...

An approach to integrate sea surface temperature (SST) measurements into estimates of geolocations calculated by changes in ambient light level from data downloaded from pop‐up satellite archival tags (PSAT) is presented. The model is an extension of an approach based on Kalman filter estimation in a state‐space model. The approach uses longitude and latitude estimated from light, and SST. The extra information on SST is inclu...

To learn more about the movement patterns of bigeye tuna ( Thunnus obesus ), we deployed archival tags on 87 fish ranging in fork length from 50 to 154 cm. Thirteen fish were recaptured, from which 11 archival tags were returned, representing in aggregate 943 days‐at‐liberty. We successfully retrieved data from 10 tags, representing 474 days in aggregate. The largest fish recaptured was 44.5 kg [131 cm fork length (FL)] and th...

Geolocation data were recovered from archival tags applied to bigeye tuna near Hawaii. A state‐space Kalman filter statistical model was used to estimate geolocation errors, movement parameters, and most probable tracks from the recovered data. Standard deviation estimates ranged from 0.5° to 4.4° latitude and from 0.2° to 1.6° longitude. Bias estimates ranged from −1.9° to 4.1° latitude and from −0.5° to 3.0° longitude. Estim...