On return from the ATF meeting in Chile, I had a meeting with my colleague, the Itajaí representative of Projeto Albatroz, Patricia Mancini, and she updated me about the longline fleet in port and what has happened in Itajaí during my 15 days of absence.
Several changes had occurred in the fishing routine affecting almost 50% of vessels, who fish for the tuna which congregate around floating platform or buoys. This is a method of attracting schools of fish that was used a lot last year.
Now they are using a hand-line method, which is very good for the seabirds, and the bycatch in this kind of fishery has so far been seen to be zero. However, it could be interesting to follow this kind of fishery in the future to better understand it.
Before I went to meet the local fishermen, the Brazilian ATF team had a meeting by Skype (Brazil is a very large country!) to discuss and plan our work following the ATF meeting in Chile.
The main point of discussion was to define tori-line experiments and the decide upon practical designs. The challenge right now is to carry out various cruises and consequently get together a research plan, jointly with ATF Uruguay, and also with the support of lead researchers from the USA and Australia.
We visited the three main fishing harbors at Itajaí and I met again many fishermen that I discussed my trip to Chile and our work. In these visits, I had the opportunity to meet crews before they set off and I noted that in this time of the year, the efforts were concentrated in the north of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro States.
Few vessels took a risk to sail faraway to reach the Rio Grande Elevation, a popular fishing area far offshore. No bycatch of seabirds were reported according to the skippers and crewmembers, because not many birds were about, typical of this season.
Many fishermen confirmed the tori-line efficacy, but they only used the equipment when there were large numbers of seabirds accompanied the vessel during fishing operations. They always invite me to go onboard with them and my answer is: “everything at the right time, soon we will be together on the high sea!” We still had a lot of preparations to do!
On 19 February I left Itajaí to meet the other ATF members in Santos. At the same time, the longline vessels based at Itajai harbors departed to sea and as each cruise takes around 20 days, I will have enough time to work at Santos and come back on time to accompany the Itajai fleet as they land their catch. In Santos the Projeto Albatroz team and the ATF instructors discussed the best methods to use tori-lines to save as many birds as possible.
There is lots of work to do, so we keep doing our job to save the albatrosses!