In May-June 2007, 12 longline vessels from Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines received a permit to fish in South African waters, targeting mainly tuna and swordfish.
According to the South African law, every one of these vessels must carry an observer at all times. These observers who were trained by ATF members to collect seabird data amongst other fishing data started reporting huge numbers of birds being killed during fishing operations.
Barry and I spent the months of July-November driving up and down from the office to the harbour collecting dead seabirds from the docking boats. It got so bad that we actually had to rent a freezer in the harbour to temporarily keep all the birds in.
A total of 1,056 birds were reported killed between June and December 2007, including some very rare birds such as sooty albatross (first bycatch record in South Africa to my knowledge) and wandering albatross.
As a result, the Albatross Task Force and WWF Responsible Fishing Programme sat together and drew up a proposal of action to give to the government. This proposal focused on the permit conditions which every fisherman must follow when fishing in South Africa, and on the enforcement regulations.
The major breakthrough in this proposal was the implementation of a precautionary seabird catch limit which states that if a longliner kills 25 birds in total from the beginning of the year (i.e. 2008), they must prove that they used the necessary mitigation measures required by law on every set, such as bird scaring (tori) line and night setting.
If the boat has reached that limit and followed these conditions (recorded by the observer), they can continue fishing with more restrictions until they catch another 25 birds which in this case they must cease their fishing operations for the rest of the year.
If the boat wasn't following one of these conditions then they must cease their fishing operations for the year.
To our great pleasure, the government has adopted the proposal and along with other restrictions, such as obligatory participation of all skippers and officers in BirdLife (ATF) seabird mitigation training section, added it to the permit conditions officially in place since January 2008.
2008 is going to be a very exciting year! We are working very close to the Marine and Coastal Management (government marine authorities) to see how they enforce these new added regulations, which hopefully will help us eliminate the unnecessary killing of these beautiful creatures.