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I was arranging a trip on a deep-sea hake trawler for routine seabird interaction data collection and mitigation measure demonstrations, which luckily gave rise to a trip on board the ‘African Queen’, one of the local deep-sea trawlers. On arrival, I was well received with great smiles...

Apart from being at sea, one of the aspects of ATF work that interests me is improving our understanding of the social and cultural aspects of people’s behaviour toward biodiversity. A fundamental requirement for any conservation project is for the local community to understand the effect of...

During eight days at-sea we only managed to half-fill the fish hold on this fishing vessel. This explains how the fishing has been recently. We can’t blame it on the weather because most of the days were fine. However, there were some few days when the sea was rough with strong winds, thus making...

For this blog I am posting on behalf of my friend and colleague Rodrigo Forselledo: Rodrigo wrote the following: As Sebastian is enjoying a short period in the UK, I have taken on his ATF duties in Uruguay. On my first pelagic longline trip I started testing the new design of the bird-scaring...

The Chilean National Plan of Action Seabirds states that bird-scaring lines must be used on all pelagic longline sets. However, despite good seabird conservation regulations for this fleet, many vessels still don’t use this mitigation measure. The Albatross Task Force has been working in collaboration...

Yesterday Nahuel and I were with testing new improvements to the Tamini Tabla design, giving some final touches to the towed device which stabilizes and maintains bird-scaring lines in place during rough weather on trawl vessels. We expect this to be the final version! We made some changes in the...

The best practice suite of mitigation measures for pelagic longline fisheries is the combination of a bird-scaring line, appropriate line weighting and night setting. This combination protects the area where hooks are still close to the surface (bird-scaring line), sinks baited hooks rapidly out of the...

Two years after the implementation of the NPOA-S in Argentina, the first workshop was held as a follow-up to the plan. In the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development over 40 specialists including researchers, academics and members of Non-government Organisations plus representatives from...

The South African Albatross Task Force team, together with an observer agency ( CapFish ) and government representatives, conduct briefings with the fishing masters of the Asian longline fleet. This year was the same as other years and we managed to conduct briefings for all fishing masters of the 11...

Each year thousands of seabirds are accidentally killed while foraging behind fishing vessels in the world’s oceans. Thanks to a device known as a bird scaring line, which is flown behind vessels to protect the danger areas, seabird bycatch has been reduced in some fisheries by up to 90%. Ocean...

A few days ago I was in contact with a fishery observer who is at-sea aboard a longline vessel gathering biological data near Staten Island to the south of Argentina. This boat must now use mitigation measures; one of which is a bird-scaring line to reduce albatross mortality. The Federal Fisheries Council...

When we were defining our annual work programme in Chile we were keen to maintain a link with the community, beyond that of the fishing industry. In fact, we have always strived to extend the information about seabird bycatch and albatross conservation to the public in general. As such we decided...

During my last trip I continued experimenting with the Uruguayan ATF tori lines that we are developing, trying to obtain a greater set of results so we can be certain of what solutions to recommend to industry. This brought up a personal milestone, achieving my 400th day at sea! I started as a sailor...

I've just got married and as soon as my honeymoon was over, I headed off to sea – back to the stinky boats! This trip was on a commercial trawler. This vessel was the first vessel I have seen that has stopped routinely discarding fish waste during the setting of the trawl gear, which prevents...

Our work during the current fishing season has been to focus on supporting the monitoring programme for the swordfish fishery, which the Chilean fisheries investigation institute (IFOP) manages. This monitoring includes sea-trips carried out by scientific observers on 100% of the longline fishing vessels...

My most recent trip lasted 24 days, many of which we suffered some bad weather. The fishing master was targeting big eye tuna and sharks. As for seabirds, we had 17 species around the vessels as we worked and a single black-browed albatross was hooked during the haul. Lines were set on 11 days during...

At this time of the year when we go to sea, we get a bit apprehensive because of the changing weather patterns. As it happened, while we were preparing to leave for sea the wind suddenly turned to the south-west. So we had to wait and depart the next day. We went to monitor an 'albatross-friendly...

I recently returned from my trip on the Astra 1 after 15 days at sea, but we were only able to fish for eight due to poor weather conditions. The target species for this vessel was yellow-fin tuna and during fishing operations we had around 20 species of seabird joining us. Six seabirds were caught...

I'm sitting in the port of Coquimbo in Chile, just about to set off for a month aboard a longline vessel. The fishing crew will be looking for swordfish on this trip. We've spent some time on trip preparations. We are going to try using time depth recorders. These small devices, no larger...

During the later half of June it was off to sea again on the Irvin & Johnson wet-fish trawler, the Stevia. Once again I was looking at making the tori lines (bird scaring lines) work their best to prevent seabird deaths. Naturally, winter is the season when seabirds are most abundant in our waters...

The year started with a big decrease in the numbers of longline fishing vessels active in the swordfish fishery in Chile. Currently there are now five vessels at-sea and two industrial freezer ships waiting to leave port. That gives us a total of just seven vessels. As each vessel prepared to leave...

We have arrived in the summer months of December and January and typically the pelagic longline vessels stop their activities and the crew take a well-earned rest. This period lasts until the end of February and in some cases extends to mid-March. During this time, I have taken the opportunity to...

I've just returned from a two and a half week trip onboard shark longliner. The shark longline fleet in South Africa is pretty small, only 3-4 vessels, which mainly fish for mako sharks. The gear set up of the vessel is slightly different but the fishing techniques are very similar to the swordfish...

Fishing concepts... fishing crew develop their own albatross scaring device. Akira sails to the fishing area, and during the journey, I build the tori lines cables (bird scaring lines) together with the crew. They learned a lot, and so did I! The wide experience of these men makes them capable of absorbing...

Hello seabirds' friends. I am here to tell you the news from Santos/Brazil Port. As the summer is not a good time to observe birds here in Brazil, I have been preparing the vessels to start to test the bird scaring lines (tori lines). This equipment is essential for scaring seabirds while the...