Onboard the longline fishing vessel 'Verde Vale XI'
As part of our work putting bird scaring devices (tori lines) on longline fishing vessels who use the port of Itajai, I am visiting the Verde Vale vessel. They have heard about all the awareness raising activities that we at the Albatross Task Force are doing. The skipper has agreed to have me on board.
So, I am going to sea with them to introduce the tori lines in their fishing operation. On this vessel, we are going to test a new model of tori line - all the time we are searching for the best way to make this method of protecting seabirds the most efficient as possible. We use information collected from previous sea trips and interviews with the fishermen themselves.
Although this vessel often uses the Rio Grande harbor, in extreme southern Brazil, the fishing industry is based at Itajaí and the skipper lives at the same city. This is good for us, through personal contact with this skipper it gives us the possibility of introducing the seabird methods into vessels using the Rio Grande port as well.
After a vessel inspection and an interview with the crew, we installed two cables for the tori lines. All the crew helped building the tori lines and at this time, I had the chance to explain them the methodology to be used, the work of the Albatros Task Force and the seabirds' biology.
We hope that with these talks, we could get them to use the tori line in all their sea trips, in order to minimize the incidental capture of seabirds.