How to Use bycatch in a Sentence

bycatch

noun
  • Alaska’s pollock fishery used to take in a lot of salmon bycatch.
    — Lela Nargi, Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2022
  • Much of the bycatch gets tossed over the side, dead or alive, as required by federal law.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 8 Oct. 2019
  • That bycatch includes king and chum salmon, crab, halibut, and other species.
    — Outdoor Life, 28 Sep. 2023
  • There is an effort to get more details in bycatch reports, Lowry said.
    — Yereth Rosen, Anchorage Daily News, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Many believe the rate of bycatch isn’t as high as reported or believed.
    — Danielle Bernabe, Fortune, 1 Nov. 2022
  • This included the hundreds of redfish that were scooped up as bycatch.
    — Outdoor Life, 21 Sep. 2023
  • In some cases, tori lines have reduced the bycatch of seabirds by as much as 98 percent.
    — Lela Nargi, Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2022
  • The lights also reduced bycatch of seabirds in gillnets by about 85%.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 16 Aug. 2021
  • If the bycatch is of legal size – at least 73 inches long – fishers can keep and sell the fish.
    — Tristan Baurick, NOLA.com, 13 Sep. 2020
  • Many sharks end up as bycatch when long lines and gill nets unintentionally catch them.
    — Amy Chillag, CNN, 28 June 2024
  • And what goes unseen is not factored into stock or bycatch assessments.
    — Laine Welch | Fish Factor, Anchorage Daily News, 13 Sep. 2021
  • Shark bycatch causes costly loss of gear and adds risk to crew members who must handle and release sharks that are still alive.
    — Bill Kearney, Sun Sentinel, 6 Feb. 2026
  • Turtles have been seen ingesting bits of garbage floating out to sea, or getting snared as bycatch in fishing nets.
    — Katherine J. Wu, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Apr. 2020
  • Farther offshore, longlines set for swordfish and tuna were catching a lot of makos as bycatch.
    — Capt. John McMurray, Field & Stream, 10 Feb. 2020
  • Farming shrimp also helps with the wild shrimping 80 percent bycatch rate.
    — Rebecca Hazen, Houston Chronicle, 12 Mar. 2018
  • Over 5 million pounds of halibut was taken as bycatch in other fisheries.
    — Anchorage Daily News, 12 Jan. 2021
  • Anything caught up in the net that wasn’t the target food species—known as bycatch—gets hauled aboard the ship, often dead, and thrown back overboard.
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 18 Jan. 2024
  • For many years, both kinds of toothfish were minor bycatch for ships searching the cold southern waters for marbled and gray rock cod.
    — Tristram Korten, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Aug. 2020
  • The project is working with fishermen and larger fisheries to reduce this bycatch.
    — Nina Burleigh, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Jan. 2024
  • This deep-sea predator, characterized by its large eyes and tiny teeth, was found during bycatch surveys with shrimp trawlers.
    — Real-Time News Team, Miami Herald, 12 Sep. 2025
  • The species is known to inhabit deep ocean waters and is typically only caught as bycatch.
    — Sage Marshall, Field & Stream, 10 Aug. 2023
  • If successful, these devices could be used to reduce seabird bycatch in small- and large-scale gillnet fisheries around the world.
    — New York Times, 10 May 2021
  • Finally, a common outcry has been against the trawl fleet, which does take crab as bycatch in the Bering Sea.
    — Elizabeth Earl For Alaska Journal Of Commerce, Anchorage Daily News, 16 June 2022
  • At the time some commercial fishers sought to keep bycatch, or incidentally caught sport fish such as walleyes.
    — Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 24 Dec. 2021
  • However, the greatest threat to great whites is being entangled in fishing nets as bycatch.
    — Kathleen Wong, USA TODAY, 9 Feb. 2023
  • If a whale is caught as bycatch, fishermen must report the incident to the Coast Guard.
    — Nicole McLachlan, National Geographic, 16 June 2016
  • Thoothoor fishermen agree with this but say that the reverse is rare; longlines set out for shark fisheries do not result in bycatch of other species.
    — Bhanu Sridharan, Quartz India, 25 Nov. 2019
  • The males that are taken as bycatch and the female carcasses are ground up for meal for foreign fish farms, or simply discarded.
    — Laine Welch | Fish Factor, Anchorage Daily News, 28 Mar. 2022
  • In Alaska waters, much of the fish taken as bycatch is not discarded but donated to food banks.
    — Laine Welch, Alaska Dispatch News, 26 Aug. 2017
  • Vaquitas are small porpoises which must surface to breathe, and end up as bycatch, drowning as they get ensnared the large-net gillnets set for totoabas.
    — Sandra Dibble, sandiegouniontribune.com, 15 Oct. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bycatch.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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