ISSUE 3 NOVEMBER 2007

SEA CHANGE

Welcome to the third edition of Sea Change, the GlobalSeabird Programme's newsletter. Since the last issue inJuly 2006, the project has moved on leaps and bounds.The Albatross Task Force (ATF) has expanded to eightmembers, three in South Africa, two in Brazil and threein Chile. It is expected that the ATF will continueexpanding, into Uruguay, Argentina and Namibia in thenear future.

Advocacy work with the major Regional FisheriesManagement Organisations (RFMO) responsible for thehigh seas pelagic longline fleets is showing dividends.Representatives of the Programme have participated inthe Commission meetings of the five major tuna fishingRFMOs. Progress is often slow and laborious but

changes are slowly being implemented, resulting inimprovements to the seabird mitigation measuresemployed in these fisheries.

Partner News brings a mixed bag this issue. SPEA, SEOand BirdLife Malta, are all working on innovative projectsto investigate shearwater distributions and evaluate theimpact of interactions with fisheries. FalklandsConservation continue to reduce seabird bycatch inSouth Atlantic fisheries. However, its not all good newsseveral incidents of high albatross bycatch haveoccurred in New Zealand waters over recent months.Importantly, these incidents were reported and BirdLifepartner, Forest and Bird, are currently working with thegovernment to tighten up the regulations.

Fabian

o P

epp

es

The newsletter of the Global Seabird Programme

Programmegoes fromstrength tostrength

Fab

ian

o P

epp

es

Setting at night helps to reduce

bycatch of seabirds

WELCOME

BirdLife had a great result at the March 2007 meeting ofthe UN Food and Agriculture Organization Committee onFisheries (COFI), which is a bi-annual meeting of theprimary international body responsible for thedevelopment of international fisheries policy andmanagement. It was also responsible for enacting theFAO National Plan of Action–Seabirds (NPOA–S), so thereare strong links between the work of COFI and the GlobalSeabird Programme (GSP).

Prior to the meeting, we lobbied several key MemberStates to secure backing for a workshop (FAO ExpertConsultation) to draft ‘best-practice guidelines’ for thedevelopment of NPOA–S. At the meeting we receivedstrong support from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, NewZealand and the USA – which secured the Committee’ssupport for the development of best-practice guidelines forNational Plans of Action to help reduce seabird bycatch.

The Committee agreed, in co-operation with relevantbodies (eg Commission on Conservation of AntarcticMarine Living Resources, Agreement on the Conservationof Albatrosses and Petrels and BirdLife International) todevelop best-practice guidelines. These will assistcountries and Regional Fisheries ManagementOrganisations (RFMO), the bodies responsible for themanagement of high seas fisheries and highly migratory

fish stocks, in implementation of the International Plan ofAction–Seabirds. It was also agreed that the best-practice guidelines should be extended to otherrelevant fishing gears. This latter point is particularlyimportant as it gives scope for the guidelines to feed intoRFMO processes and provides a clear mandate to addressnon-longline fisheries (eg trawl) in the guidelines.

We are working with several key Member States and theFAO to plan for the consultation in 2008. Once agreed,the guidelines will be a valuable tool for implementingthe FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries,helping Member States create more robust NationalPlans of Action that promote the use of mandatory andvoluntary mitigation measures to reduce seabird bycatch.They will also give guidance to RFMOs on more effectivemeasures on a regional scale to reduce seabird bycatchin their fisheries.

BirdLife considers that the case for best-practice guidelinesis urgent and predicated on two key issues: firstly theaccelerating decline of albatross population status aroundthe world; and secondly the publication in recent monthsof a number of new NPOA–S. This makes it timely to distillessons from which future plans can benefit and to assistcontracting parties to develop them.

FAO best-practice guidelines

Ben

Su

llivan

FAO best-practice guidelines to be

extended to cover trawl fisheries

International albatross workshop delegates

ALBATROSS TASK FORCE

ATF updateWe are almost 18 months into one ofRSPB/BirdLife’s most ambitious andexciting projects; and the AlbatrossTask Force (ATF) continues to go fromstrength to strength. After spendingconsiderable time planning the

strategic development of the world’s first internationalteam of mitigation instructors, we now have eight ATFinstructors in-place. This includes three working in SouthAfrica, for 15 months, two in Brazil, for eight months, andthree in Chile, for three months. Two instructors in Chilework in the pelagic longline fishery that operatespredominantly from Coquimbo (north of Santiago) andone half-time instructor based in Valdivia works in thedemersal longline fishery. The Chile team is managed byBirdLife collaborators Prof Carlos Moreno and RodrigoHucke-Gaete, who are founding members of CentroBallena Azul (CBA, www.ballenazul.org), an NGO ofsouthern Chile. The team in Chile have excellent contactsin both the fishing industry and government, and we arewell placed to make exciting progress in the short term,including providing skilled personnel to assist in theimplementation of the country’s National Plan ofAction–Seabirds.

Over the last 12 months, the South African team havemanaged to hold workshops in every port used bypelagic and demersal longline fleets, and haveassembled and distributed around 30 sets of tori lines. Inaddition to collecting at-sea data, providing tori lines anddemonstrating a range of other mitigation measures (egline weighting in longline fisheries) and conductingindustry training workshops, the team have trainedaround 60 fisheries observers and governmentCompliance Officers on the need for and use ofmitigation across South African longline and trawlfisheries. This part of the work is critical as it converts theincreased knowledge of fishermen into changes in theway fisheries operate by ensuring compliance withmitigation requirements.

In the demersal hake trawl fleet, the team collected at-seadata to establish the baseline impact of the fishery onseabirds. This was estimated to be around 18,000 birdsper year; an alarmingly high figure. Over 100 tori lineswere assembled and distributed to the fleet along withan ATF brochure highlighting the nature of the problemand short-term (tori lines) and long-term (dischargemanagement) solutions. We played a critical role inensuring that new regulations were brought into force.They require the mandatory use of tori lines and prohibitthe discharge of offal during net-setting operations.

We are already seeing tangible results from our work andsimilar positive signs in Brazil, where we have alsoachieved fantastic progress in eight months. Severalworkshops have been held in both Santos; the primaryport for pelagic longliners in the south of Brazil, and

Itajai. As the largely artisanal fleet operating from Itajai(in southern-central Brazil) has not previously beeninvolved in initiatives to reduce bycatch of seabirds, ithas taken more time to establish links with industry.However, the team are off to a great start and have metand interviewed the captains and crews of 14 of the 20vessels in the fleet and have conducted 10 at-sea trips todemonstrate the use of tori lines and blue-dye bait toreduce seabird bycatch.

Since the initial planning phases of the project, werecognised that once it reached a critical size of around10 instructors, a dedicated co-ordinator would berequired to help manage the team. The ATF is currentlyundergoing a rapid phase of expansion. With Argentina,Uruguay and Namibia all likely to come on-line in thecoming months, we are on the verge of a major growth,and the recruitment of an ATF co-ordinator is a majorstep forward. The co-ordinator will facilitatecommunication across the project and help to develop anintegrated and effective project that incorporates andmaximises the strengths of ATF in-country projectleaders and instructors.

We are excited about the results we have achieved in ourfirst year of operation. Having completed developing alot of the strategic planning and infrastructure that such acomplex multi-national project requires, we can focus onthe expansion of the project in South America andsouthern Africa, and on delivering action where itmatters most…at the stern of the vessel! The ATF isalready taking steps towards halting the decline ofalbatrosses and petrels by working with fishermen andgovernments to erase the world’s bycatch ‘hotpsots’.

You can follow the progress of the ATF on our websitewww.savethealbatross.net and very soon you will noticethe impact of our increased capacity in terms ofinstructors and the ATF Co-ordinator with morefrequently updated diaries and news stories.

Bir

dLi

feATF continue to build strong links

with the fishing industry

MARINE IBAS

Marine IBAs starting to become real in PortugalPortugal hosts the eleventh largestExclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) inthe world, and the largest in theEuropean Union. The archipelagos ofAzores, Madeira, Selvagens andBerlengas vary from the mid-Atlanticto the pure Macaronesian and/orsub-tropical habitats, and are thebreeding grounds for dozens ofseabird species (including four thatare globally threatened).

SPEA, BirdLife partner in Portugal, isnow beginning to see the first resultsof its work as the Marine ImportantBird Area (2004–2008) and SOSPterodroma feae (2006–2010) LIFEProjects start to produce veryinteresting data.

With an average of two boat-cruisesevery month, several aerial surveysdesigned to study seabird migrationalong the coast of mainlandPortugal, and a group of more than15 observers, we are now able tocover a big portion of our enormousEEZ. As you can see in Figure 1(following page), there are still areas

that need to be covered, especiallyaround the Azores, and we will focusour efforts here this year.Nevertheless, this picture exceedsour most optimistic initialexpectations, and we are happy tosay that all major fishing areasand/or important banks will besurveyed at least once.

In addition, several different trackingdevices, from radio-transmitters tocompass, Global Positioning Systemand/or geolocator loggers deployedon Cory‘s shearwaters, littleshearwaters, band-rumped storm-petrels and Bulwer’s petrels are nowrevealing amazing results thatalready pin-point our future networkof marine IBAs. As you can see inFigure 2 (following page), we havetracked birds from all Portuguesearchipelagos but one, Selvagens,which will be done this year.

Amongst the results, we can see howthe Cory’s shearwaters breeding atthe Desertas archipelago do not visitthe African shelf west of their

colonies, but instead travel to theimportant fishing banks that occur offMadeira, and even further north.Some other interesting data provethat the much cheaper compass-loggers are as reliable as satellitetags, showing the same feedingbehaviour for birds tracked with thesetwo types of device in the centralgroup of the Azores archipelago.

Over the coming months, SPEA willcontinue its work, merging theexisting projects with new ones, anddeveloping several statistical modelsthat will determine which variablesare most important for the definitionof marine IBAs. Together withSEO/BirdLife we will continue toadapt the IBA Terrestrial Criteria tothe marine environment. We alsointend to release an interactive CD-ROM, containing our firstdefinitive marine IBAs, next winter.

Check all our progress at ourwebsite:http://programamarinho.spea.pt/

Ben

Lascelles

Cory’s shearwater

Figure 1: Seabird survey transects, 2004–2007

Figure 2: Distribution of tracked Cory’s shearwaters during chick rearing and incubation, 2006

MARINE IBAS

Following a series of alarming incidents in the last year,the New Zealand government officials are drafting strictmeasures that will significantly reduce seabird bycatch inNew Zealand fisheries.

The largely voluntary framework under the New ZealandNPOA-Seabirds appears to be unravelling. Since mid2005, there have been several disturbing capture events –from only five fishing trips, captures of 90 white-cappedalbatrosses were observed in trawl fisheries (IUCN status,vulnerable), 58 Antipodean albatrosses (vulnerable) inpelagic longline fisheries, 12 Chatham albatrosses(critically endangered), and 22 Salvin's albatrosses(vulnerable) in bottom longline fisheries. These captures,along with a large number of smaller events in monitoredfishing fleets show that seabird bycatch continues to be aproblem in New Zealand fisheries.

Following the event that killed 12 Chatham albatrosses,measures are being considered to address bycatch acrossbottom and pelagic longlining, and may include lineweighting, night setting and tori lines. This follows theintroduction of mandatory night setting for all pelagiclonglining for tunas or tuna-like species introduced in

January 2007, and mandatory bird scaring lines (tori-lines)which have been in place for several years. The BirdLifeand Fishtek project to develop fisher-friendly safe-lead lineweights for pelagic longlines is seen as a key step toensuring that line weighting is taken up more broadly.

New Zealand BirdLife partner Forest & Bird welcomes thedevelopments as a significant first step to address theissue of seabird bycatch, but hopes that satisfactorylonger term solutions, including line weighting, will befound not just for seabirds, but also for sharks andturtles, which are also caught as significant bycatch inthese fisheries. Forest & Bird are continuing to encouragethe New Zealand government to greatly increaseobserver monitoring of seabird bycatch, from the roughly5% coverage deployed currently.

These incidents show that voluntary measures andmanagement of seabird bycatch through voluntary Codesof Practice has proved to be ineffective in many NewZealand fisheries. Although a great many responsiblefishing operators are using the measures defined underthe Codes of Practice to good effect, these measures arenot being generalised across the whole fleet.

BirdLife Maltasecures EUfunds forseabirdsIn an exciting development for seabird conservation inthe Mediterranean, in March 2007, BirdLife Maltaofficially launched another EU Life funded projectentitled: SPA Site and Sea Actions Saving Puffinusyelkouan in Malta. The project is the first Maltese project to be selected by the European Commissionunder Life Natura.

The project, which started last September and willcontinue over a period of 46 months, aims to reverse thedecline in the Yelkouan shearwater population at Rdumtal-Madonna, a designated Special Protection Area (SPA)and host to the largest colony of Yelkouan shearwaterson the islands. The colony consists of 500 of the 1500breeding pairs in the Maltese islands. The aims of theproject will be achieved through a combination oferadication of rats, improving breeding habitat, reducing

human disturbance at the SPA site and investigatinginteractions with local fisheries.

For further details contact Helen Rainehelen.raine@birdlifemalta.org

PARTNER NEWS

New Zealand develops newregulations to protect seabirds

Fran

k D

her

mai

n

Yelkouan shearwater – subject

of an EU Life funded project

Continuing seabird mitigationsuccesses in Falkland trawlfisheriesBack in 2001, Falklands Conservation identified extensiveseabird deaths in the Falklands’ trawl fisheries. Trawl-related mortalities have emerged as the most seriousproblem for seabirds in the area. Extensive surveys,during the austral summer of 2002/03, estimated aminimum of 1500 birds killed per year. These werealmost entirely black-browed albatrosses, whose longwings are easily entangled in the warps as the birdscompete aggressively to get close to the offal.Subsequently, trials to tackle this problem showed thatpaired tori lines were the most efficient and cost effectivemitigation device.

In July 2004, tori lines became mandatory on all licensedfin-fish trawlers as part of a National Plan of Action(NPOA-trawling) to reduce seabird deaths in the trawlfisheries. The following year, there was an estimated 90%reduction in seabird mortalities from trawlers deployingtori lines. Mitigation measures were extended to theLoligo gahi squid trawl fleet in July 2006 and now

effectively all stern trawlers operating in Falklands’waters use tori lines, with Falkland-flagged vesselsextending this to the high seas. Recent trips conductedby Falklands Conservation observers, during March andApril 2007, have shown that captains and crews havebecome more confident with the use of tori lines,deploying them during the critical early net-settingperiod when the majority of residual mortalities occur.

With the NPOA-trawling due for review at the end of2007, the next phase is to set binding targets for seabirdmortality limits in the trawl fisheries, a process that hasbeen successfully accomplished in the Falklands’longlining fleet.

For futher information contact Isaac Forster:isaac.forster@conservation.org.fk

Visit Falklands Conservation atwww.falklandsconservation.com

PARTNER NEWSS

arah C

rofts

Seabirds that forage with outstretched wings

such as black-browed albatrosses can easily

be injured on trawl warps

In the past two years, at least four of the world’s five tunacommissions have made significant progress inaddressing bycatch of seabirds in their longline fisheries.However, obstacles remain to be overcome.

The world’s five tuna commissions manage some of thelargest and most valuable longline fisheries in the world.Longline fisheries of temperate tunas and swordfish inparticular overlap to a high degree with albatross andpetrel distribution. In 2005, when BirdLife conducted itsreview of the environmental performance of the tunacommissions and other fishery organisations1, most hadtaken very little, if any, action on seabird bycatch.

Now in 2007, all five tuna commissions have passedseabird resolutions and three have requirements forseabird bycatch mitigation measures2. BirdLife is anobserver to all five tuna commissions, and has beenworking with them over the past two years to provide data on high risk areas for seabird bycatch, and on measures to reducemortality. BirdLife is a key player in the Atlantic tunacommission’s seabird assessment that began in February2007, and is working with the Western and Central PacificFishery Commission on its Ecological Risk Assessment.

Seabird bycatch is firmly on the agenda of the meetings,and key delegations are pushing for advances.

However, much work is still needed before statedintentions are fully translated into effective action: theAtlantic tuna commission does not yet have mitigationrequirements in place; there are still low levels ofobserver programme coverage in all the tunacommissions; and systems to monitor compliance withand effectiveness of mitigation measures are still lacking.The southern bluefin tuna commission (CCSBT) is ofparticular concern, having been in deadlock for almost 10years. CCSBT must review the effectiveness of its currentrequirement for a tori line. However, the progress madein the past two years in the other tuna commissions issignificant. BirdLife will continue to work with RegionalFisheries Management Organisations to assist them inreducing seabird bycatch in their fisheries.

Tuna commissions makeprogress in tackling seabird bycatch

Tamm

y Pelu

so (iS

tock)

Four of the five tuna

commissions are making

progress in addressing

bycatch of seabirds – but

obstacles remain

1 Small, C J. 2005. Regional Fisheries Management Organisations: theirrole and importance in reducing bycatch of albatrosses and otherspecies. BirdLife International, Cambridge, UK.

2 Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, Western and Central Pacific FisheriesCommission, Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna

BBC show highlights the plightof the albatrossThis year, millions of BBC1 viewers saw the work of theRSPB/BirdLife’s Save the Albatross campaign. The BBC’s Saving Planet Earth series devoted a whole showto the albatross.

The programme started with Carol Thatcher, the show’spresenter, in the Falkland Islands. Over the last 10 years,the population of black-browed albatrosses in theFalklands has fallen from 438,000 breeding pairs to399,000. Many of them have been killed by longlinefishing methods, which account for 100,000 albatrossdeaths every year. This equates to one every five minutesand is the major factor behind 19 out of 22 albatrossspecies being threatened with extinction.

Carol said, ’I’d only been in the Falklands for a couple ofdays, but I could see the problem for the albatrossstraight away. It flies huge distances looking for food andfrequently comes into contact with humans. And whenthat happens, it’s the same old story. Humans one,albatross nil.’

The work of the Albatross Task Force (ATF) washighlighted when Carol travelled to Brazil, which is wheremany of the Falkland’s albatrosses go in search of food.ATF member Tatiana Neves was on board a fishing boatdemonstrating seabird-friendly practices to the crew. Shewas able to show that, when boats used the mitigationmethods, seabird deaths were virtually eliminated.However, she also showed the sad haul of albatrossesthat had been killed by a neighbouring boat wheremitigation methods had not been used. This illustratedthe need to put Task Force members on as many vesselsas possible, as quickly as possible.

The BBC Wildlife Fund has been set up in associationwith the Saving Planet Earth series to support projects tosave endangered species around the world and the ATFwill benefit from it.

Read more about Saving Planet Earth:www.bbc.co.uk/savingplanetearth/albatross.shtml

The BBC devoted a whole

programme to the albatross in

its Saving Planet Earth series

An

dy B

lack

WRITERS’ CORNERJohn Cooper,Vice-Chair, ACAPAdvisory Committeeand Honorary TristanConservation Officer,writes on the Tristanalbatrosses of Gough Island

It is the 31st of January 2007 and Iam slowly climbing the mountainousslopes of Gough Island in the mid-Atlantic. In my too-heavy pack is acake, as it is my 60th birthday. It isalso my last day as a universityacademic. A year before, I decided toretire from the University of CapeTown while in the field, rather thanthe office, and chose Gough as thebest place to do it.

Six of us, four from Cape Town andtwo from Tristan da Cunha, left theSouth African meteorological stationin Transvaal Bay to spend up to eightdays camping in the uplandscounting Tristan albatrosses. Ouraim was to undertake a full-islandcensus of incubating birds. This wasno easy task given the often-difficultweather conditions, rugged terrainand, even with hand-held GlobalPositioning System receivers, theproblem of not knowing exactlywhere one is in a terrain lackinghuman constructions of any kind andwith obscuring mist a regularfeature. Gough Island is part of theUnited Kingdom Overseas Territoryof Tristan da Cunha and is aproclaimed nature reserve and WorldHeritage natural site. It is also hometo myriad seabirds, several speciesof which are in deep trouble.

The Tristan albatross, one of thegreat albatrosses of the genusDiomedea, is endemic to the TristanGroup, and except for a tiny remnantpopulation of less than five pairs onInaccessible Island, breeds only onGough. Like all the albatrosses of theSouthern Ocean, it is threatened bylongline mortality at sea, especially inthe offshore waters of Brazil.However, unlike most other species

of albatross, it also faces a seriousthreat on land from the introducedhouse mouse. Once the guard stageis over, the mice move in and literallyeat the downy chicks alive, causing avery low breeding success over largeparts of the island. Thus the Tristanalbatross faces a double whammy:losing its ‘capital’ in the way of adult(and juvenile) birds dying on hooksat sea, and suffering from a low‘interest’ rate with few chickssurviving to fledge. Not surprisingly,the annual censuses strongly suggestthe population is declining, with the2007 count of 1279 ‘ApparentlyOccupied Nests’ (AONs) the lowestyet (the 2001 count was 2400 nests).The bird has been categorised asEndangered by BirdLife Internationalfollowing World Conservation Union(IUCN) criteria, and populationmodelling now being conducted maywell push the bird into the CriticallyEndangered category.

Action has started to reduce the at-sea mortality. For example, Brazilhas recently adopted its NationalPlan of Action–Seabirds (NPOA–S) interms of the Food and AgricultureOrganization’s guidelines, and theInternational Commission of theConservation of Atlantic Tuna(ICCAT) has commenced a review ofincidental mortality in its fisheries.Namibia and South Africa, bothrange states for the Tristan albatross,are also progressing their NPOA–S.In terms of the land-based threat,research on the house mouse,including its susceptibility to apoisoning effort, is continuing andlate in the year a New Zealandexpert is set to visit the island toundertake a feasibility study for aneradication campaign based on thedispersal of poison bait byhelicopter. If the feasibility study ispositive, then an operational planwill be drawn up, detailing exactly

Bir

dLi

fe

John enjoys his

60th birthday cake

on Gough Island

how the mice can be eradicated (andat what cost, as it will certainly notbe a cheap operation).

Deciding to commit the necessaryfunds (several millions of poundssterling) will ultimately be a politicaldecision, one more likely to be taken ifthere is strong public support withinthe United Kingdom, as well asglobally. The UK (including itsOverseas Territory of Tristan daCunha) is Party to the internationalAgreement on the Conservation ofAlbatrosses and Petrels (ACAP) andhas thus already made aninternational commitment to save thespecies. But before poison bait canrain down on Gough there is a need toconsider its side effects. There are twoendemic land birds on Gough, abunting and a moorhen, and it will beessential that sufficient numberssurvive the campaign to eradicate themice. Research on the birds’susceptibility to poison bait is thusrequired, and it may even benecessary to take ‘re-founder’populations into temporary captivity toensure their survival, releasing birdsback onto the island after the poison(and, we hope, the mice) have gone.

So, it is likely to be a few more yearsbefore we can expect the Tristanalbatrosses of Gough to breedunhindered by mice. It is thereforeintended to continue annual censusesof breeding birds, to confirm thedecline currently taking place – andkeep their threatened status high onthe agenda. Ideally, such countsshould be continued after any mouseeradication, so as to measure theexpected improvement in breedingsuccess and, ultimately, populationsize. In addition, a detaileddemographic study has been set upin two different parts of the island,with all the breeding birds beingcolour-banded and their nests staked.This will allow breeding success (andsuch parameters as life-time breedingproduction) to be assessed in detail.

When I was an undergraduate in the1960s, I used to say I had threeambitions: to see what 1984 wouldreally be like in comparison toGeorge Orwell’s frightening vision,to stare upwards at Halley’s Comet,and to see in a new millennium. Atthe time all three events seemed farin the future, as far in the past asthey now seem to be. My new, and

much more important, ambition, isto see the end of the Gough miceand to know that the at-sea mortalityof Tristan albatrosses has beenreduced to the absolute minimum byimproved fishing practices. We havestarted on the road to bothachievements and I trust (and hope) Iwill live to see them both attained.For my own part, I will do what I canto help in my retirement, with theexpectation of several more‘birthday climbs’ on one of theworld’s most important (andbeautiful) seabird islands.

Research and conservation activitieson Gough Island are undertaken withthe approval of the TristanGovernment by the combined effortsof the Royal Society for the Protectionof Birds, the Tristan Agriculture andNatural Resources Department andthe University of Cape Town. Principalfunding received from Birds Australia(BirdLife in Australia) through its‘Save the Albatross Campaign’ andthe International Association ofAntarctic Tour Operators, and theUnited Kingdom’s OverseasTerritories Environment Programmeis gratefully acknowledged.

Peter R

yan

Atlantic yellow-nosed

albatross, endemic to

the Tristan da Cunha

Island group

WRITERS’ CORNER (contd)

BirdLife International, Wellbrook Court, Girton Road,

Cambridge CB3 0NA, England. Tel: +44 (0)1223 277 318

www.birdlife.org

I N T E R N A T I O N A LBirdLife

This newsletter was produced by the RSPB, registered charity England andWales no 207076, Scotland no SC037654.

End notesThe Global Seabird Programme is co-ordinated, onbehalf of the BirdLife International Partnership, by theRSPB (BirdLife Partner in the UK). Programme staff atthe RSPB include Euan Dunn (Head of Marine Policy),Cleo Small (International Marine Policy Officer), BenSullivan (Global Seabird Programme Co-ordinator)and Andy Black (Technical Officer). Please feel free tocontact Ben by e-mail: ben.sullivan@rspb.org.uk withcomments and potential articles.

The Smart Lead is a new device thatwill help to reduce the number ofseabirds killed in pelagic longlinefisheries by increasing the uptake ofappropriate line weighting. It has beendeveloped by Fishtek Ltd (UK), whohave been working closely with BenSullivan of BirdLife International’sGlobal Seabird Programme onmitigation measures for pelagiclongline fisheries.

Although there is a wide range ofoperational and environmentalvariables that affect the bycatch rate ofpelagic longlines, the single mosteffective means of reducing seabirdbycatch is to sink the longline rapidly,to prevent seabirds from accessingbaited hooks. The Smart Lead cameabout in response to the safety issuessurrounding the use of leaded swivelsto increase the sink rate of longlines.Leaded swivels ranging from 45 g to100 g are used to increase the sink rateof the branch lines.

The problem with conventional leadedswivels (also referred to by fishermenas ‘lead bullets’) is that during a bite-off (eg when sharks are hauled to the

surface and swim hard away from thevessel), which stretches the branchline to breaking point; the swivelslingshots towards the boat atdangerous speed. A 2 mm diameterbranch line will accelerate a 60 gleaded swivel to speeds of 500 km/h.Over the past few years, there havebeen serious injuries and even deaths.Such incidents have causedunderstandable reluctance to useweighted swivels.

The Smart Lead (see diagram) resolvesthe problem as the weight is designedto fall from the line whenever the linebreaks under tension, thus protectingthe fishermen from injury.

By addressing the fishermen’s safetyconcerns, we can encourage moreboats to use line weighting, whichwould have a significant impact onseabird mortality.

Prototypes are currently being testedand proving to be very reliable.

Sea trials are planned in Australia,Hawaii, New Zealand and SouthAfrica. We look forward to reportingon these results.

Smart Lead is one of two new devicesdesigned by Fishtek Ltd – the other isthe ‘Bait Pod’, which encapsulates thebaited hook and releases at a specificdepth – more about the Bait Pod in ournext issue.

Fishtek Ltd is a dynamic UKcompany focused on developingtechnologies to reduce bycatch. It isrun by Pete Kibel (Fishery Biologist)and Ben Kibel (Engineer).

For more information contactpete@fishtek.co.uk or Ben Sullivan atben.sullivan@rspb.org.uk

Smart leads

BirdLife International’s World Conference will be held between 22 and 27 September 2008 in Buenos Aires.Workshops will be held throughout the week and although the agenda is yet to be finalised we hope to feature thework of the Global Seabird Programme in many of these sessions.

The fourth International Albatross and Petrel Conference will be held in Cape Town from 11 to 15 August 2008. Forfurther details and a pre-registration form visit www.iapc4.org

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Smart Lead

270-0926-07-08