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 from various sources that fishermen were harming seabirds whilst at-sea. We had some alarming reports of mistreatment. Many of the reports actually related to the recreational fishing sector, which is the general public fishing from privately owned vessels on weekends or during angling competitions. We started to do a bit of investigating and it seemed that most people had no idea of how to handle birds. It seemed appropriate that we provide some guidance to improve the situation.
We started by sending letters to many of the fishing clubs in the area just highlighting the issue and offering to give demonstrations on how to safely handle seabirds. We also gently reminded them that it was actually illegal according to the South African Sea Birds and Seals Protection Act of 1973. Many of the clubs responded favourably and immediately informed their members – we even had clubs from other parts of the country contacting us as the message passed on by word of mouth.
We then had the idea of creating a cartoon which could be easily understood by people with different languages, operating in different fisheries and with different levels of education, outlining the safest methods to release seabirds for both people and the birds. This had a massive impact – we spread this through electronic forums, clubs, nature organisations and volunteers who were willing to drop some copies off in the local harbours. Somehow the message even got as far afield as the Falklands Islands, where an offer came to have the small amount of accompanying text translated into Spanish!
We continue to drop these off when conducting our harbour visits or when doing one of our sea trips ...but since then we have not received any more complaints...but continue to keep an eye out as our work continues! We can see that by giving the fishermen the correct tools we can all win!