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There have been some remarkable highlights recently with the second Instructors Workshop held in Piriapolis, Uruguay being one of them. That was an inspiring week, but there were some tense moments beforehand as our visas were only granted three days before we had to fly out of Walvis Bay. Cutting...

The last two mont hs have been quite hectic. The work has been great fun and really rewarding capped by a really good sea trip at the end of May. I continued with the tori line experiments that I have been doing for the last nine months. This work has proved to be really successful showing fishermen...

Aft er working the last year aboard trawlers I have now started to work on longline vessels that target deep-sea hake off the coast of Namibia . I have just completed a very successful first trip aboard the West Coast II. This vessel sets fishing lines up to 27 km long along the seabed. During the...

Summer has arrived and with it the departure of many of our foraging albatrosses and petrels to their breeding islands in the southern Oceans around New Zealand, the storm-ravaged islands in the Roaring 40’s and South Georgia. These birds have been replaced by several species of seabirds that have...

We’ve had very exciting and excellent weather in Walvis Bay this month with dominant south-westerly winds creating ideal conditions for a variety of water-sports and the flocking of birds into the lagoon. Namibia has a closed season in the hake fishery every October with the primary aim of protecting...

At the end of September, I was invited by Rossing Uranium Limited, a large uranium mine that is owned by Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ), to present a talk to a group of secondary school students. They were taking part in the Rossing Bird Day. RTZ conducts this Birdlife partnered activity annually as part of their...

By deploying bird scaring lines (tori lines) from trawl vessels, seabirds are prevented from colliding dangerously, and often fatally with the trawl cables. To assess the performance of the tori lines in the Namibian fishery we are carrying out trials onboard commercial vessels and demonstrating their...

I was recently invited by the International School to give a talk to their students about my work - a brilliant opportunity as many of the kids have parents involved in the fishing industry. In fact, my invitation came about because two of the senior students had done a project about a year ago on...

The big news from Namibia is that we have now begun our research project, and flown the first ever bird-scaring tori lines on a trawler in Namibia. This honour fell to the MFV Fisherbank belonging to Hangana, a Namibian company that has been very supportive of our work. The crew were fantastic, and...