They live for up to 60 years and start breeding when they are 10 or 12 years old, raising one chick every two or three years. This lifestyle means populations build up very slowly, and are extremely vulnerable if many adults die prematurely.

Since 1989, international management rules for tuna fishing have cut the number of hooks used by longliners. Along with changes in fishing gear this can substantially reduce bycatch of seabirds. The birds don't feed at night, so fishing then is less damaging. Throwing the baited lines clear of turbulent water around the boat so that they sink faster, and scaring the birds away with streamers can also help reduce bycatch.

Albatross are not the only birds to drown on longlines or get entangled in nets. Guillemots, auks, razorbills, shags, and gannets are a few of our own coastal birds which get caught up in fishing gear. In April 1985 at least 200,000 over-wintering guillemots were caught in gill nets around Auver in Norway during 12 days gillnetting for cod. During the winter at St Ives in Cornwall, stormy weather concentrates auks and fish within the bay. Fishermen follow the fish and accidentally gillnet hundreds of these birds despite a voluntary ban on monofilament nets within the bay.

The image of wheeling, screaming gulls following fishing boats is something even city folk recognise from childhood picture books. Bycatch thrown overboard is an important food source for some populations of seabirds around Britain. Ironically, when these easy meals dry up some birds may suffer. On Skomer and Skokholm in the Irish Sea, lesser black- backed gulls are no longer able to feed their chicks on discarded fish. The reason seems to be changes in the French fishery for scampi, 80km south-west of the islands. In the last few years as few as 10 per cent of the chicks have survived on a meagre diet of earthworms brought by the adults from the mainland. But for every bird that might benefit from discards, others suffer and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has joined the campaign to minimise bycatches.

Out of sight is out of mind. Without realising it many shoppers buy seafood which has been caught by killing countless other sea creatures. Prawns are a good example. Shrimp trawls are notorious for ensnaring sea turtles such as the leatherback and the green sea turtle. Todd Steiner, director of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, compares turtles with mine shaft canaries, in the former's case alerting conservationists to the enormous waste of other marine life in this industry. The fine mesh nets needed to catch shrimp take up to 10 times more fish than the shrimp they are targeting. These trawlers are responsible for fully 35 per cent of global fish bycatches and 4.75kg of marine life is wasted for every 1kg of shrimp landed. Approximately 124,000 turtles die in shrimp trawls each year.

A turtle trapped in a net will drown in 40 minutes; however, there is a solution. Hinged grates can be fitted to trawls to allow turtles to escape. The hinged grate acts like a sieve to let small shrimp pass through, but opens against the weight of larger animals which can then swim free. Since 1992 American shrimpers have also used these grates to save haddock, cod and flounder caught up in the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery. The grates are now compulsory for American shrimpers and for fleets selling wild-caught shrimp and prawns within the United States. Unfortunately not all countries are so conscientious, and untold numbers of turtles and fish still die in other shrimp fisheries.

Bycatch in shrimp fisheries is just one example of unwanted fish simply being thrown away. If fish stocks have been overfished, limits need to be set on how many fish can be captured so that populations can recover again. The trouble is that it's very hard to fish for just one species. The use of quotas can control fishing which specifically targets the overfished stocks, but it doesn't stop the same fish being taken as a bycatch by boats fishing for other species. If the boats don't have a licence for these fish they have to be thrown back, even though only about 40 per cent will survive. Halibut stocks in the North Pacific are declining to between ten and 15 per cent each year but 7.25 million kilos are thrown overboard as bycatch.

The regulations are supposed to remove the temptation to fish illegally, but while one fisherman throws fish away, others can't fill their quotas. North Sea industrial fishing directed at sprat in fact catches more juvenile herring than sprats. These small fish are made into animal feed or fish oil, often misleadingly labelled as animal fat in packaged food. In the North Sea, overall, the annual tonnage of herring taken as bycatch in fisheries aimed at other species is around 40 per cent of the total herring catch. In 1990 discarded haddock and whiting amounted to more than a third of the amount that was actually landed.

You don't have to be a committed environmentalist to realise this appalling wastage is pointlessly vandalising both our oceans and our future financial prospects.