This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Dolphin numbers in the Indian Ocean may have dropped by more than 80 percent in recent decades, with an estimated 4 million small cetaceans caught as “by-catch” in commercial tuna-fishing nets since 1950, according to a study.
As many as 100,000 cetaceans–mainly dolphins–were caught in commercial gill nets as by-catch in 2006, with current annual numbers at about 80,000.
Published in the journal Endangered Species Research, the study used the changes in the number of dolphins caught in gill nets as a way to calculate changes in dolphin populations in the Indian Ocean.
The authors say gill-net fishing in the Indian Ocean is “effectively unmanaged” and potentially the biggest unresolved issue facing cetaceans today.
The study, led by Charles Anderson of the Manta Marine organization in the Maldives, estimated that dolphin numbers had likely dropp
