| Summary: | One pressing economic, societal and environmental issue affecting commercial fisheries is the production of undesirable outputs. In fisheries, undesirable outputs often arise because of economic or regulatory discarding of commercial species and/or the incidentally caught or ‘take’ of protected species, such as sea turtles and marine mammals. In fisheries, undesirable outputs are an economic problem because: Non target catches increase harvesting costs because of the added costs of retrieving and removing the unwanted catch, replacing lost or damaged gear, and installing by-catch excluder devices. They also indirectly increase overall production costs due to the risk of fishery closure (Watson et al. 2006). Additionally, by-catch mortality and its concomitant impact on population sizes can potentially damage the function and structure of the ecosystem (Stohs et al., 2011).
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