ByRA

Characterizing the risk to marine mammal populations, especially from fisheries bycatch, in data-limited environments has been one of the drivers for the creation of the Bycatch Risk Assessment (ByRA) toolbox (Hines et al. 2020, Verutes et al 2020). ByRA provides a flexible, open-source, GIS-based approach for incorporating diverse sources of information ranging from qualitative to quantitative on stock and fisheries distributions, species life history, and susceptibility to gear interaction. Applying ByRA provides an overall risk assessment for each stock and fishery considered; this could be used to help ascertain status for data-poor stocks and provide spatially explicit information that may help inform monitoring and management. The ByRA toolbox has been applied for risk assessment in a wide range of data availability scenarios in multiple nations, and has been adopted by the IWC’s Human Induced Mortality Working Group to support the Bycatch Mitigation Initiative.