Making a Killing – Not a Living

These images show ocean wildlife that were killed at sea by the drift gillnet fishery targeting swordfish and thresher sharks in United States waters off California. Oceana obtained these disturbing images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in February 2014 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Most of the photos in this slideshow have never been released to the public before. NOAA collects these images for species identification purposes through a fisheries observer program, which, in this case, identified animals such as sea lions, sharks, whales, and dolphins. Due to the difficulties in disentangling animals from the drift gillnets, fishermen often cut off the fins and tails of dolphins and porpoises to remove the untargeted animals from the nets.