Fishermen have no way of separating the fish they catch when they cast their nets at sea. Protected species and fish with no market value—the hammerhead shark, for example—end up being trapped and dying for no reason. In an attempt to minimize this incidental fishing, statisticians from the University of Geneva (UNIGE, Switzerland), Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada) and the Australian National University (Canberra) have devised a new statistical method for predicting bycatches more accurately in the future. The technique, which is explained in full in the journal Annals of Applied Statistics, can also be applied to other research fields, including health economics, medicine and educational science.