It was mid-June, meaning the middle of winter and a mere week before the shortest day of the year. At this time of year the waters just off the Western Cape coast are brimming with seabirds and trawlers are followed by thousands of hungry birds squabbling over discards from the boats. The usual culprits including Subantarctic Skuas hitching a ride on the boat, as well as the beautiful ‘mollies’ are present in good numbers…

I recently conducted a harbour visit at one of Cape Town’s most elegant and popular tourist attraction spots, Hout Bay harbour. Situated in the south-west of Cape Town and bordered by the amazing Table Mountain on the east, Hout Bay harbour has become very popular as a seaside resort to both local and international tourists.

Harbour visits are integral to the objectives of Albatross Task Force (ATF) and this one…

Before joining the ATF I was fortunate enough to visit the South Atlantic Ocean islands of Tristan da Cunha and Nightingale. The three month trip was one I will never forget.

Below: The view of Nightingale Island from the ocean

On Nightingale Island I spent 11 weeks doing research on the endangered single island endemic Wilkins’ Bunting. I was greeted by the sight of breeding Sooty and Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatrosses…

The Albatross Task Force is working in Ecuador to investigate the causes of seabird bycatch in marine fisheries and develop solutions to mitigate this impact. Unlike many of the fisheries where the ATF is active, fishing techniques in Ecuador are often considered 'artisanal' or small-scale. This means that the fishing operation is manual, fishing gear is simple and time at-sea is relatively short compared to mechanised…

This year has been a major learning and experience gaining year for me as the leader of the South African ATF team. I have been given many opportunities to get involved in the application and international relevance of the work the ATF conducts.

Some of the fisheries that we work in target fish stocks that are highly migratory and traverse large distances across our oceans. Most well known of these are the various tuna…

This blog was written for ProDelphinus in Peru by Elizabeth Campbell.

I wake up at midnight. Usually, I am going to bed at this time. But today, I have plans for the first hours of the day. My backpack is ready, packed with snacks and warm clothes. As I turn off the lights of my room I double check to see if I am forgetting something, then leave to meet with my captain. 

In Peru, if you want to find a fisherman at port…

The main objectives of the Albatross Task Force (ATF) is to reduce seabird bycatch, and ultimately to improve the conservation status of vulnerable species. This often involves working at-sea with different fisheries in South Africa such as hake longline, pelagic longline and deep-water trawl fisheries.

Earlier this month, I got on board a hake longline vessel in Saldanha Bay, north of the city of Cape Town. I have been…

By satellite phone I contact Oli Yates, ATF Coordinator to report on progress. I am somewhere in the south Indian Ocean having joined a reefer ship in Singapore. So far I've been at-sea for just over a week. My destination is a longline vessel fishing for Blue fin tuna in the Indian ocean. The task in hand is to perform experimental trials to investigate how the addition of weight to branch lines affects target fish catch…

As winter approaches the cold fronts usually start to roll into the 'Mother City' bringing with them colder temperatures and lots of rain! This had not been the case in autumn as we experienced some amazing weather with bright and sunny days. Winter has definitely arrived now though, albeit a little later than usual.

I am amazed still to have the privilege of going out to sea and watching seabirds as part of…

Hi everybody,                                                                 

For sure, when you see this post I will be at sea, as I am setting off in an hour's time (18th June). I’m going to sea for the first of several fishing trips that have been arranged to evaluate the performance of the Hook Pod in the Brazilian pelagic longline fishery.

The Hook Pod is an innovative mitigation measure that encapsulates the barb of the fishing hooks until they sink beyond the reach…

Chile has great potential to be recognized as a "hotspot" for marine biodiversity, including seabirds that can be found in its waters. Thanks to a long and complex geography, Chile has water bodies in the Humboldt Current, ocean environments of Polynesia, as well as the far southern fjords and channels in sub-Antarctic waters.

In this way, an essentially maritime country has never been far from the interaction…

Our fishing season normally starts in February of each year and runs through to December, spanning almost 10 months. For seabirds the highest priority months are from May through to September, when seabirds are more abundant in our waters.

We have two major fisheries that contribute significantly to our national GDP and they are hake trawl and tuna longline fisheries. The Albatross Task Force team has observed and identified…

This blog entry was written by: Andrew Johnson

When the alarm goes off at 3am, you generally know that you are about to have a “different” sort of day. It was a quick cold shower and then out into the (very) early morning heat to take a motor-trike down to Mancora Port in Northern Peru where I met local longline fishermen.

I was there as a volunteer as part of the ATF in Peru which is ran by ProDelphinu…

This blog was written by Elizabeth Campbell, of ProDelphinus, Peru.

We were approached early one morning by a fisherman in Mancora. He was just back from a fishing trip targeting yellow fin tuna and hammerhead sharks. We started chatting about our work and he mentioned how he had seen albatrosses at sea while he was fishing with nets off the port of Mancora in northern Peru.

After a couple hours chatting the fisherman…

I was arranging a trip on a deep-sea hake trawler for routine seabird interaction data collection and mitigation measure demonstrations, which luckily gave rise to a trip on board the ‘African Queen’, one of the local deep-sea trawlers.

On arrival, I was well received with great smiles and hand-shakes from the Skipper and his first mate. The skipper, Mr Roy Diedricks is of course the pioneer of one of the…

Apart from being at sea, one of the aspects of ATF work that interests me is improving our understanding of the social and cultural aspects of people’s behaviour toward biodiversity.

A fundamental requirement for any conservation project is for the local community to understand the effect of our actions on the environment. I have often been impressed with communities like Talcahuano, in central southern Chile where…

Among the activities that we conduct as ATF instructors, working with the crew aboard fishing vessels is the most difficult to accurately quantify. We can identify a seabird to species or sub-species level, record the exact times of fishing operations, statistically demonstrate the efficiency of mitigation measures but working at-sea with members of the fishing crew is different. It is a deeply social aspect of our work…

The sub-Antarctic islands and fjords in southern Chile together form a complex geographic area with thousands of components of archipelagos and marine channels. In this region, also known as Chilean (western) Patagonia, there are important breeding sites for seabirds. Among these, two of the most important islands are Diego Ramirez and Ildefonso, which together hold over 20% of the global population of Black-browed Albatross…

The European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA) is a group of companies, which provide grants to support the environment. This year our very own Albatross Task Force has been selected as a candidate to win over £20,000 of funding in the ‘nature’ category.

The project was nominated by Páramo, who are also generously supporting the Albatross Task Force with waterproof kit which will keep our instructors…

Every year BirdLife South Africa gathers a congregation of very knowledgeable scientists and birders to discuss issues around bird conservation. This annual gathering has since been coined ‘FLOCK’ and it is BirdLife South Africa’s Annual General Meeting (AGM). This year, however was pretty different with the largest number of attendants and a lot of relevant conservation lectures given to the audience. It also included…

As the Albatross Task Force team leader for South Africa, I was recently asked to provide some fishery observer training slightly further from home than usual. Excitingly I was to travel to Korea and conduct a one-day training workshop with Korean fisheries observers and scientists from the South East Atlantic Trawl Fishery.  

BirdLife South Africa and the Albatross Task Force were invited to the National Fisheries Research…

Our work in the ATF generally brings us into close contact with the community, without which we would not be able to explain the phenomenon of seabird bycatch and our mission to reduce the impact on vulnerable species (see here for an example).

During these activities we always share our experiences with the audience, highlighting that we are a small team locally but that we form part of an international effort to save…

In Chile we recently took part in the XXXII Congress of Marine Sciences, organized by the Marine Sciences Society and the University of Magallanes. This annual event brings together all the disciplines related to the ocean, and on this occasion we presented our work with albatross and fisheries.

We gave two presentations, the first at a Biodiversity and Conservation seminar. In this instance, my colleague Cristian Suazo…

As an instructor with the Albatross Task Force in Argentina, I embarked for 45 days aboard a pelagic (mid-water) trawl vessel that targets whip-tailed hake, also known as "hoki" (Macruronus magellanicus). The ship sailed from the port city of Ushuaia - at the end of the world!

On this trip I was conducting work related to seabird interactions with fisheries as part of the process towards this fishery obtaining…

Hi everybody! Last month I returned from my last trip at-sea here in southern Brazil, on board a pelagic longliner. The cruise was amazing, and in addition to the success in obtaining data on our mitigation measure research, I experienced incredible and magic moments.

The fishing area was the continental slope in the southernmost part of Brazil, just adjacent to Uruguayan waters, between 300-100 m deep. The target fish…