Hake feed at night close to the surface and return to the bottom in the morning. As a result, lines are set in the early morning.
As in the tuna longlining, the birds are getting caught while trying to seize the baits during the setting of the line, but also getting caught on hooks while feeding on offal next to the boat, as thousands of hooks are hauled back to the vessel at great speed (about one hook every two seconds). These vessels set in the region of 10,000 hooks per day!
In order to prevent the birds from hanging around the hauling stations, where too many hooks are threatening them, the vessels must discard the offal on the other side of the boat and so distract the birds away from the hooks.
Boarding the vessel, I was welcomed by a warm crew and a nice surprise - one of our own tori lines was neatly packed, ready to be used.
I was happy to see that the working deck (where the fish and baits are processed) was enclosed; this way, the birds might be less attracted to the boat.
The trip went very well... we had rough seas most of the time, with winds reaching to 40 knots, and quite a few birds around, dominated by white-chinned petrels. Thanks to the fact that the offal is discarded on the other side, the closed deck and use of the tori line, we came back from the trip with zero dead birds, which is always good.
I want to thank Johny, Robert and Shane who helped me with the line sinking experiments and Captain Fareiro for a lovely trip.