Mid-October saw me giving two presentations to skippers and industry representatives about how to prevent albatross deaths in the South African hake trawl fishery.
The venue was Cape Town and four fishing companies were represented. Seabirds are attracted to vessels to feed on discards from processed hake and by-catch. The vast majority of mortalities that take place in trawl fisheries here and in other southern hemisphere waters happen when large-winged birds such as the 'mollymawks' become entangled with the trawl warps (steel wire ropes) and are dragged underwater and drown.
To help reduce these mortalities, tori lines (bird-scaring lines) became a permit condition in my country on 1 July this year. Other means of mitigation have been trialled on our vessels but it has been shown that tori lines reduce mortalities up to 90%; they are also inexpensive and easy to deploy.
Of course, it is all very well having permit conditions stating tori lines to be flown for each and every drag, but inspection vessels cannot monitor each and every vessel.
So I asked the fishermen before me: 'Do you think compliance is higher than 40%?'. I thought I was about to get lynched. They replied to a man: 'Of course it is much higher than that; we are watching each other and very few vessels are not complying'.
'What would be your reaction if a vessel not genuinely flying a tori line was escorted back to port and tied up for two days?' I asked.
'No problem' came the reply (these guys are all obviously adhering to permit conditions).
It is close on two years now that I have been working with trawlermen. I even call myself an honorary trawlerman. On several occasions I have said, publicly, that the huge, positive response shown by this fishery on the plight of the albatross has blown me away; the future for the birds in our trawl fishery can only improve.