BirdLife International’s Marine Programme produces an instructional video on seabird mitigation for longline fishers

BirdLife International’s Marine Programme along with financial support from the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation has produced a seven and a half minute instructional video directed at longline fishers.  BirdLife reports:

 “The BirdLife Marine Programme’s work to reduce seabird bycatch in high seas fisheries will be familiar to followers of our efforts to save several albatross species from extinction.  We have succeeded in encouraging all five tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs – the bodies that manage high seas fisheries) to put seabird conservation measures in place, requiring vessels to deploy bycatch mitigation on board.  Our next task is to help ensure that these measures are actively implemented on vessels and track their efficacy in reducing seabird bycatch.  To that end, and thanks to funding from the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, we have developed an instructional film for the skippers and crew of longline vessels, highlighting the issue of seabird bycatch and describing the simple and effective measures that can be taken to minimise fishing impacts on seabird populations.  While this is mainly aimed at fishermen, it’s stuffed full off great albatross footage and neatly illustrates how to solve the problem of bycatch in longliners.”

The Albatross and Petrel Agreement has also worked at meetings of all the tuna RFMOs to encourage the adoption of the three best-practice mitigation measures of deployment of bird-scaring (streamer) lines, adequate line weighting and night-time setting for pelagic longline fishing (click here).

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 August 2015