| Summary: | ICES Annual Science Conference 2023, 11–14 September 2023, Bilbao, Spain Cetacean strandings can provide key information to assess and understand bycatch mortality and its potential impact on populations (as for common dolphins in the Bay of Biscay) but the extent to which this is currently feasible varies widely across Europe. Several initiatives are presently underway to improve and standardize bycatch diagnosis from carcasses, streamline reporting of strandings data, and establish a common database. The ICES Working Group on Bycatch routinely gathers available information (currently far from comprehensive) on annual stranding records by member states, including information on evidence of bycatch, which feeds into the ICES advisory process on bycatch of Protected, Endangered and Threatened Species (PETS). In 2021, ICES Working Group on Marine Mammal Ecology initiated a questionnaire survey of European strandings networks to gather information on their organization, resources, protocols for data and sample collection, and bycatch diagnosis, in cetaceans and other PETS. ACCOBAMS completed a similar initiative in 2022 and we are presently consulting West African strandings networks about the information they collect on PETS bycatch. The utility of strandings to quantify bycatch is being investigated in several projects in Spain. The IWC has current bycatch and strandings initiatives, and ASCOBANS and ACCOBAMS have developed protocols for cetacean necropsy and bycatch diagnosis. In April 2023, two relevant workshops are planned, the ECS/ASCOBANS workshop on “Scoping the development of a European marine strandings database” and the ACCOBAMS-ASCOBANS workshop on “Current cetacean bycatch issues in European waters”, This presentation will briefly describe the various ongoing initiatives and their results to date. Based on the WGMME questionnaire survey, cetacean bycatch is an important cause of death for harbour porpoises, pelagic delphinids and baleen whales. Several regions reported upward trends in bycatch ...
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