Good news! A recent report shows a healthy increase in the numbers of black-browed albatrosses breeding in UK Overseas Territory, the Falkland Islands. 

The report, by Dr Anton Wolfaardt, has been submitted to the Environment Committee of the Falkland Islands Government.

The black-browed albatross is currently endangered. With more than two-thirds of the global population breeding in the Falkland Islands, the status…

Working aboard a hake longliner in Namibia is a tough life for everyone aboard. The hours are long and gruelling. I would say longline crew are amongst the hardest working people in Namibia and always battling against difficult sea conditions. I have just spent the last two weeks on board to compare the traditional concrete weights used in this fishery with 5 kg steel weights, to demonstrate how denser weights can help…

This month I thought it would be a good idea to follow on from one of my Brazilian colleague’s diaries which highlighted the poor attitude of some fishermen towards seabirds.

His diary can be found here, as a reminder of the problem.

I have only ever seen one or two birds with broken bills while out at sea in Cape Town (as Dimas showed in his diary). But towards the middle of 2011 we started receiving many reports…

Hi everybody! I'm writing to share a curiosity about working at-sea: we often see more than just seabirds out on the open ocean. There are many reports from captains and crew about passerine and coastal birds that are swept out to sea on strong winds and land on passing vessels over one hundred miles from the coast. Some captains have cages and bird food on board, and if some passerine appears, they help the  little…

During our work we quite often get the opportunity do something completely different! One such day was towards the end of last year...the 11 November 2011...or more commonly known as 11.11.11.

On this day, students, filmmakers, NGOs and the general public across the globe had a 24 hour period in which to record the ‘human experience’ and contribute to an annual global day of creating media called One Day on Earth. One…

I was recently in the port city where I live, Mar del Plata, Argentina. The fisheries situation in our country has reached a critical point. It has been 90 days since many of the trawler vessels have been to sea due to crew demands for wage improvements, with no sign of a solution.

The situation is very complicated; the sailors protest in demand of a decent wage, they burn rubber tyres, restrict access to the ports…

The last few months have seen several reports in local and international press of dead birds on beaches of central Chile. Specifically, a mass mortality of sea birds was recorded in May on the shores of the town of Rocas de Santo Domingo. The first reports mentioned some 2,000 dead seabirds within four miles of this coastal city.

The cutting below shows an example of local press coverage of the mass mortality event

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 Asian longline fishing vessels that operate in our waters.

The briefings are interactive and are generally one and half…

The FV Joao N Castro leaves port today and I will be going with her. 

Over the past couple of months I have been preparing for this important trip, which is the first of a series of at-sea experimental trials to test new line-weighting in the demersal (bottom) longline fishery here in Namibia.  The captain of the Joao N Castro has agreed to collaborate with the ATF to compare 5 kg steel weights with the standard concrete…

After more than 30 days of delays and set-backs, the FV Salomão VI finally left the port of Santos, where Kleber Baraldo has been working with the ATF team in Brazil, run by local NGO Projeto Albatroz.

The wooden-hulled vessel was about 45 feet (14 metres) long and typical of the Itaipava fleet, which is famous for their diverse fishing methods. It is hard to classify the fishery as some people consider it to…

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 View is a coastal village near Cape Point where there is a very high level of unemployment, due in some ways to the demise…

Cory’s shearwater breed on islands in the Mediterranean and north-west Atlantic Ocean, after which they migrate down through the Atlantic and onto the western Indian Ocean. They are common summer visitors to southern Africa, especially off the western and southern coast, while more scarce off the south-eastern coast.

During a recent trip, shortly after we had just finished hauling an 80 km longline off Richard…

Hi everybody. I thought twice before writing this diary, because we usually try to provide more positive information and show beautiful pictures of our work. However, our job is not always about happy endings; we also witness a lot of sad situations.

In this instance I specifically refer to the albatrosses that we observe during at-sea trips that have suffered having their bills mutilated by fishermen. This happens when…

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, a government agency that regulates fishing in Argentina has included this requirement in fishery legislation. 

Before…

The Albatross Task Force (ATF) not only aims to educate fishermen about the work we do and implement the solutions into tangible rules within the fishing industry, but we also aim to educate the public and other researchers within the realm of seabird bycatch.

Once a team has implemented the best practice measures to reduce seabird bycatch in a fishery, further research can help refine measures to ensure they are as…

When the Albatross Task Force (ATF) was launched, at a dinner in the city of London in 2005, there was a feeling of hope in the air that we might be able to do something practical to slow down the rate that albatrosses were being killed in the fisheries of the Southern hemisphere. We said that we wanted 6 instructors working with fishermen showing them how to use tori lines and other methods that would prevent seabirds…

During the last month I was at-sea aboard a wet fish trawl vessel - a kind of trawler that keeps the catch fresh on ice instead of processing and blast-freezing like the industrial trawlers.

We sailed out of the port in Mar del Plata where I live in the north east of Argentina. The crew were already aware of our work as I have visited the vessel in port before. This trip they had agreed to collaborate with the ATF and…

The Albatross Task Force is working with the longline industry in South Africa, where recently we came across a very rare seabird in our waters – a Tristan Albatross, which was accidentally caught as we were conducting a routine trip onboard one of our local vessels.  What makes this all the more distressing is the wealth of information we were able to find about about the individual bird thanks to a ring recovered…

An emerging mitigation measure – the Hook-pod is currently being tested in South Africa and have been well-received by local fishermen. Their first impression was a feeling of awe. I can recall one skipper at Cape Town harbour calling them ‘precious toys’. My response to him was that these ‘precious toys’ will definitely save the seabirds and probably improve fishing and even stand the chance of saving you money.…

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 to end the year, having completed the last at-sea trips of 2011, by sharing our experiences with two important components…

I recently returned from a routine Albatross Task Force at-sea trip onboard a conventional wet fish trawl vessel in Argentina (fish are stored on ice, but not frozen like on the larger freezer vessels). The trip lasted a total of 16 days and fishing was concentrated around 300 km east of the Valdéz Peninsula, where I carried out various different initiatives in relation to seabird conservation and fisheries.

Last month I returned from my most recent trip, this time aboard on the FV Maria, the same longliner that I had worked with last winter. We spent 19 days at sea and conducted 15 longline sets. In order to minimize seabird interactions all these sets were performed with a tori line deployed and were started at night. Despite the constant presence of albatrosses and petrels during the operations we performed another trip…

The Volvo Ocean Race has worked closely with the Save the Albatross Campaign since 2005, helping to increase awareness around the global plight of albatrosses. The Save the Albatross Campaign was initiated to inform and demonstrate to fishermen how to prevent incidental mortality of these endangered birds. We, the Albatross Task Force form an important aspect of how the campaign functions.

This year the Volvo Ocean Race…

Last week, the ATF in Argentina sent a package to Ushuaia, where the fishing vessel Antartic III from fishing company Estremar S.A. was waiting. In the package were two sets of specially designed tori lines that resulted from ATF tests aboard the vessel this year.

The use of tori lines is now obligatory in this fishery, as established through a mandate from the Federal Fishery Council and the Fishery Undersecretary.…

In my most recent trip to sea, we set off for a period of eleven days from the port of La Paloma, located on the east coast of Uruguay. We had already partaken in various trips on this vessel, and so the crew already knew us well and they were happy to collaborate with our work again. We now have a much greater sense of confidence from the industry than when we initiated the  experimental work.

The fishing was satisfactory…