We have started our work as Albatross Task Force Members in Brazil! We (Fabiano and me) are proud that we belong to this world team that will raise awareness about the implementation of measures to avoid the accidental catch of seabirds in the Brazilian waters. This is great!
On our first day of contact with fishermen, still on land we met the AKIRA V fishing vessel Captain Celso, and its Japanese ship owner, also named Akira. This was a remarkable day because only rarely do these two ever meet!
As they arrived at Santos, we saw them unloading the tuna fish and we took the opportunity to give them all brochures from the Save the albatross campaign and other educational brochures from our Projeto Albatroz work.
Inside the vessel, we talked with Capitan Celso. He is an extremely communicative, friendly guy and it is apparent that he not only can be a friend in the near future, but can also help us contacting other captains to pass our message.
I was impressed with this guy and thought we could implement the tori lines approach on his vessel easily. However, I soon realised it may not be as easy as I thought, because he didn't like talking about the subject.
As we were talking about measures, another ship owner, Toki San, got into the conversation saying that this was a rubbish campaign and that killer whales should be all killed because they were destroying all the fish stock.
My hopes for Celso fell when he agreed immediately with Toki San, reinforcing the idea that all killer whales should be killed.
I continued, however, reinforcing the conversation about the importance of the implementation of tori lines and the necessary measures for every vessel to adopt this technique. Again and again, he simply didn't care.
I did not give up with his negative replies and instead of talking, I started to watch him closely and noticed that whenever he was talking with Akira, he seemed slightly afraid and was shy and timid with his boss. From that moment, I knew that if I talked with Akira I could, indirectly, talk with Celso and that was exactly what I did.
While I was watching Akira, a trendy ship owner with fashionable, spiky hair, I took a moment when he was alone and approached him and asked if he wanted his ship to appear in a documentary from an international TV station (due to come here in the end of October).
I told him that a crew from this TV station would come to record for a video about the campaign, if he would allow them on board his ship. I also told him this could be a great opportunity for his business to grow, as everyone in the world could see his boat on television.
As soon as I said this, he suddenly became very interested. However, I emphasised: 'Well, this can only happen if you implement tori lines on your vessels and tell Celso to implement our measures'.
Immediately, he ran to Celso and gave him the order: 'Celso, from now put on the tori lines in the ship... we are going to be on TV!'