Fisheries Waste 20% of Fish Catch

Industrial fishermen throw back one out of every five animals they catch, many of them dead or dying, leading to massive waste and threatening endangered species, a new report claims.

The wasted animals are known as bycatch, the unintended prey of commercial fisheries. According to "Wasted Catch," a report out Thursday from the environmental activist group Oceana, the United States discards perhaps 2 billion pounds of sea animals each year. The report is not clear about how many of these animals are sent back into the ocean alive, but the authors do complain that records were often outdated or incomplete.

"Hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales, sharks, sea birds, sea turtles, and fish needlessly die each year as a result of indiscriminate fishing gear," said Amanda Keledjian, report author and marine scientist at Oceana, in a statement. Many of these animals are endangered species that become entangled in massive fishing nets. Some of the worst offending fisheries toss out more sea creatures than they take in.