Understanding fishery impacts is imperative for understanding marine ecology and conservation. The global marine fishing industry currently dumps ~10 million tonnes (10%) of their annual catch (Zeller, Cashion, Palomares, & Pauly, 2018), yet discarding is probably one of the least studied component of fishery impacts. Discarding peaked at 18.9 million tonnes in 1989, but has since almost halved (Zeller et al., 2018), and changes in policy, such as discard bans in the European Union (EU Landing Obligation), Norway, Chile and New Zealand, are likely to reduce discarding further (Real et al., 2018). Although bans are desirable for stock management, they may have unforeseen knock-on effects for the mammals, seabirds, fishes and crustaceans that scavenge on discharged biomass (Bicknell, Oro,
inshore fishers who interacted with the SIFIDS project, providing access to vessels, committing time to meetings, testing prototypic equipment and providing feedback. We are indebted to Marine Scotland staff and Jim Watson in particular for his continued support and insight. Dr Nick Lake acted as an independent advisor throughout and his in-depth knowledge of the sector has been invaluable. Alastair McNeill as Chair of the Regional Inshore Fisheries Groups was supportive throughout and provided sage advice. The support of the EMFF Grants Team and Adam Groat is much appreciated. Lindsay Mitchell and Tanya Harkins of the University of St Andrews deserve particular praise for their weeks of dedicated work in preparing materials for the Scottish Government's audit team and attending numerous meetings with them on our behalf. We would also like to extend our appreciation and gratitude to all of those researchers who participated in the SIFIDS project and made it a success.
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