Saving albatrosses in Taiwan

This video says about itself:

Saving Albatrosses – How to Reduce Seabird Bycatch – BirdLife International

26 August 2015

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 of great albatross footage and neatly illustrates how to solve the problem of bycatch in longliners – so we thought we’d share it with you!

From BirdLife:

Speaking your language to save albatrosses

By Berry Mulligan, Wed, 16/12/2015 – 15:58

An estimated 100,000 albatrosses are killed in longline and trawl fisheries around the world each year. Longline fishing is one of the biggest threats to albatross survival worldwide and the BirdLife Marine Programme’s has worked tirelessly for over 10 years to reduce seabird bycatch in high seas fisheries and national waters, with some great successes for example in Namibia and South Africa.

We are building on this positive work. All five tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organisations – the bodies in charge of managing high seas tuna fisheries – have now put seabird conservation measures in place, requiring longline vessels to deploy bycatch mitigation on board. The mitigation techniques include use of bird-scaring lines to keep seabirds away from baited hooks, weighting to help hooks sink quickly out of reach of foraging seabirds and setting hooks at night when albatrosses are less active.

The challenge now is to ensure that all longline fleets are aware of and implement these inexpensive and required measures, particularly those countries and fleets with large numbers of tuna longline vessels fishing in the south of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans where many albatross species live.

With this in mind we have developed this instructional video in Taiwanese for outreach with longline vessels and crews. Taiwan has over 300 large-scale and 1000 small-scale tuna longline vessels, making it one of the world leaders in longline fishing.

This is the Taiwanese albatross video.

Educational materials in appropriate languages are crucial to connect with fleets and communicate effectively with skippers to demonstrate the simple methods that are available to reduce unnecessary seabird deaths, as explained by Mayumi Sato, BirdLife Marine Programme Asia Coordinator:

“So far we have had a very positive engagement with the Taiwanese Fisheries Agency and industry groups on seabird bycatch. Videos such as this help us and our partners explain both the threats and solutions directly to fishers and fisheries officials. We hope that we can continue to expand our work with Taiwanese fleets to increase the uptake of seabird mitigation measures and work collaboratively to save albatrosses.”

You can also watch the video in English [top of the blog post] and it is coming soon in additional languages. It is geared towards fishermen, but includes some great footage of albatrosses and the simple solutions that can save them.

A breakthrough in marine conservation within the BirdLife Africa Partnership: the first steps: here.