Jeremy Kiszka and I are very sad to convey the news that our friend and colleague Dr. Tim Werner died peacefully on August 29th, 2025, age 63, after a long bout with a chronic illness. Tim received his Ph.D. in 2018 from Boston University and devoted much of his career to addressing the bycatch of marine mammals in commercial fisheries. He worked for WWF and Conservation International before joining the New England Aquarium, where he developed and led the Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. The Consortium provides funding and technical advice to researchers and harvesters working to reduce bycatch. Through his work, Tim helped to develop alternative fishing techniques to reduce the bycatch of endangered and threatened species, including the North Atlantic right whale, vaquita, and franciscana. He served on the U.S. NMFS Pelagic Longline Take Reduction Team, the U.S. Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, and was a contributor to the Expert Panel for the International Whaling Commission's Bycatch Mitigation Initiative. Tim also led the development of the Guidelines to Prevent and Reduce Bycatch of Marine Mammals in Capture Fisheries, published by the FAO in 2021. In addition, Tim coauthored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and technical reports on marine megafauna bycatch assessments and mitigation. He was always supportive of students and student projects, particularly in the developing world. Tim was smart, funny, thoughtful, quirky, and a great friend to many of us - we will miss him. Tim’s family requests that donations be made to the Society for Marine Mammalogy Conservation Fund in his honor.
Andy Read Duke University Marine Laboratory
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