My last sea trip for last year was actually my second on a beautiful vessel called the African Queen. So appropriately named, as I was treated like a Queen! Even before I got boarded the vessel, there were rumours and murmurings that the skipper and the crew had something very special and exciting to show me. The hype and excitement grew as I got onboard. The crew were so happy to see me again and were just dying to tell me their secret, but the skipper hadn’t arrived so they dared not say anything yet.
When the skipper did finally arrive some of the crew just couldn’t keep it in any longer and their secret bubbled out! The skipper had come up with an idea to help save the seabirds and then he had actually built his idea and even tested it on their previous fishing trip! Now they were actually going to get the chance to show me what they had made and how well it worked.
Before we even left the harbour the grand invention, affectionately named the “Rory” line after the skipper, Roy Diedricks, whose idea it was, was brought to the bridge for me to see for my approval. The “Rory” line is a simple but innovative design, using an old piece of wood with old sections of streamers from old tori lines (recycling!) nailed into it and hanging down.
The “Rory” line was then attached using ropes to the side of the vessel towards the stern, sticking out horizontally from the vessel. Since most of the offal from the fish processing comes out on the port side, this was the side of main seabird activity and concern, and therefore the side to which the “Rory” line was attached.
In the morning of our first fishing day the “Rory” line was put out and stayed out until the very end of our trip. After the third trawl on the first day, the one deck hand named “Pikie” came to me to say that he had held back three baskets of offal to put out after processing for us to do a mini experiment so I could see just how well the “Rory” line worked.
Then one by one the baskets of offal went out, first with the “Rory” line streamers hanging down towards the water, then with them lifted up and finally with them hanging down again. It was very exciting to see the effect it had on all the seabirds. Even the little ones like the pintado petrels and white-chinned petrels were ‘jumping’ out of the way of the line. The bigger albatrosses really didn’t like it and often jumped out of the way well before it got to them.
The “Rory” line was always used in conjunction with the regulation tori lines and the two together proved to work very well. The “Rory” line could do with some small modifications to work even more effectively, but BirdLife South Africa’s Seabird division would really like to applaud Roy and all the crew of the African Queen for their efforts and ingenuity in designing and testing the “Rory” line.