Sea bird carnage won't end with one prosecution

14 July 2016

Forest & Bird says it welcomes the prosecution of a commercial fisher who refused to use the required bird deterrents and caught 38 albatrosses, but says the long line fishing industry must be better regulated to prevent the deaths of many more threatened and critically endangered birds.

“Most of our albatrosses only breed in NZ and are at risk in this fishery. We suspect that if there had not been an observer on board this particular vessel, the deaths of these birds would have gone unreported,” says Forest & Bird's sea bird advocate Karen Baird.

“Critically endangered species such as the Antipodean albatross are likely to have been included in the deaths, one of many of our albatross species regularly killed in this fishery”.

“Forest & Bird has been concerned for some time that the very low level of observer coverage in the domestic bluefin tuna longline fishing fleet has hidden the potential for extremely poor practice for avoiding seabird deaths,” says Ms Baird.

“The fact this fisher was caught by an on-board MPI observer confirms the critical need to have much higher levels of observer coverage of the domestic surface longline fishing fleet. MPI also needs to rapidly deploy electronic monitoring throughout the fishing industry to keep fishers honest”.

“We welcome MPI’s move to make weighting of the lines mandatory, which is long overdue. However, we urge them to go further and adopt recognised international best practice by requiring all three mitigation methods of line weighting, tori lines (streamers) and night-time fishing, together”.

“This particular incident is obviously a disaster for sea birds, but Forest & Bird also see this as an opportunity for MPI to push forward with regulating for line weighting throughout this fishery in the 2016/17 Annual Operating Plan (AOP) which is due to be completed in July."

“Without full commitment from MPI to properly regulate and monitor this industry, we expect that the annual sea bird carnage will continue but most of it will go unreported and undetected, something these majestic ocean-going birds cannot afford,” says Ms Baird.

Notes:

Free to use map of observed sea bird by-catch in NZ fisheries

Albatross and fishing:

Most of our albatrosses are only found in NZ and are at risk in this fishery. The critically endangered Antipodean albatross breeds on the Antipodes islands. This population is highly threatened by long line fishing and the population has been declining, in particular breeding females, so that there is now a serious sex bias in the population. Many male albatross can no longer find a partner to breed with. DOC is spending millions to clear mice from the Antipodes, but meanwhile little is being done to protect albatross at sea.

Most highly by-caught albatross species in this fishery is the southern Buller’s albatross which breed on the Snares Islands close to the location of the southern Bluefin tuna fishery in Fiordland and on the West Coast. Others include our Southern Royal albatross, Gibson’s albatross, New Zealand while capped albatross and Campbell albatross.

Mitigation measures

The three best practice mitigation measures are:

• Tori line deployment (to keep the sea birds away from the back of the boat during deployment and retrieval of the long lines)

• Weighted lines (to ensure the baited hooks sink rapidly out of reach of the sea birds)

• Deploying and retrieving the long lines at night (sea birds are less likely to be able to find the baited hooks)

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