Last month we said goodbye to a special person, colleague, friend, albatross admirer, Samantha Petersen, who left the Albatross Task Force (ATF) after four years of managing BirdLife South Africa Marine Programme, most of the time being the only one on the team.
On a personal note, Sam was the one who introduced me to the wonderful life of albatrosses and helped me more than I can describe. Sam is going to lead the WWF Responsible Fishing Programme and we are still working very closely together. Good luck Sam, and thanks for everything.
The last couple of months found me busy establishing our first ATF database which will help us organise our work, both on land and at sea. Unfortunately, it meant spending quite some time on land but mid-August I left the office and headed to my favourite place, the sea, with its albatrosses and other marine life.
The Admiraal De Ruiter is a South African pelagic longliner targeting tuna and swordfish. Its crew were very helpful and accepted our tori line happily, as the old one which I gave them about a year ago was quite worn out.
Our trip began on a good note when on day 1 we didn't catch any birds. Day 2 found us about 150 miles south of the southernmost tip of Africa where big numbers of longliners are fishing at the moment. The rich waters attract lots of birds to the area and specials such as Northern and southern royal albatrosses and wandering albatrosses were seen regularly.
On the third day, we found eight dead birds on the line. It was very frustrating. As we set the line at night and used the tori the question was what had happened there? Why so many birds specifically on that set?
Luckily, I was prepared and to try and understand, I deployed special devices on the hook line called TDRs (Time and Depth Recorder), which help us understand how the line behaves in the water, how fast it sinks and what depth it stays at. It is of great importance both to understand the seabird and turtle bycath but also the legitimate catch and I usually give the results back to the fishermen who are very keen to see what their gear is doing under water.
As I checked what happened that day, I found that the line was sinking in quite a normal rate which should be covered by the tori line but four hours later, the hook 'decided' to check the surface and spent a long period of time there - where it was available for birds - before sinking back to deeper waters.
What exactly happened there I don't know. We still need to study it but my feeling is that this is the reason for the high number of birds killed that day.
We also caught three albatrosses while hauling and the crew received a practical lesson on how to release the birds and also a demonstration of how sharp their bills are (they were all impressed by the scar on my finger).
Coming back to Cape Town, I gave the crew Albatross Task Force caps and when I came back the next day I was happy to see everyone wearing them so proudly...
Until next time...
Meidad