To address the problem of albatross being hooked by Honolulu longliners, a workshop for fishermen was held September 18, 1996. There, a handful of longline fishermen were told about techniques and equipment — nearly all of which involved minimal cost — they could use to limit the catch of albatross.
About 2,000 black-footed albatross and a roughly equal number of Laysan albatross are thought to be killed each year by the Honolulu-based longline fleet.
Sponsors of the albatross workshop were the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which has jurisdiction over the longline fleet, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has responsibility for the birds. The idea for the workshop grew out of a presentation made on albatross bycatch by Elizabeth Flint, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, at the December 1995 council meeting.
Attendance at the workshop, held at Honolulu Community College, was sparse, prompting Jim Cook, newly elected chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, to begin planning immediately for another workshop — this one to be held at a venue more convenient to the fishermen.
Cook tried to impress on those attending the September workshop the importance of reducing bird bycatch. “Few fishermen admit the problem,” he said. Still, he continued, even if each boat catches only a few, when that is multiplied by the number of boats, the total number of birds caught is significant. “It’s a major problem that we must address,” Cook said, adding that it has “the potential to close the fishery.”
Albatross and other seabirds are caught by fishermen in other parts of the world. But, as Flint explained to the workshop, the impact of longliners on the albatross found in waters around Hawai`i is disproportionately high. In fisheries elsewhere, the catch of birds is spread among many more species, so that, overall, no one species is hit as hard as either the Laysan or the black-footed are in this fishery, Flint said.
About 2,000 black-footed albatross are thought to have been taken in 1994 and 1995 by the Hawai`i fleet. For Laysan, the numbers are slightly smaller (about 1,900 for 1995). With the number of breeding pairs of black-footed albatross estimated at just 58,000 breeding worldwide, the impact of the fishery is potentially devastating.
Flint reported that in the last ten years — the same time frame, roughly, in which the Hawai`i longline fleet began fishing heavily in the northwestern islands — the population of black-footed albatross at French Frigate Shoals declined 40 percent. The drop is attributable almost entirely to the longline fleet.
Tom Webster, a fisherman who also is a member of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, repeated the point for the benefit of his colleagues: “It’s important to understand that biologists take head counts of these birds,” he said. “it’s easy to determine that the cause of bird loss is fishing.”
Fishermen were asked if they had developed any techniques to mitigate bird bycatch. Webster said he had been able to keep most birds away by letting a couple of inflated 30-gallon garbage bags billow out behind his boat. Other techniques suggested on handouts to the fishermen involved thawing bait and setting lines at night — approaches that one fishermen said he thought could be used at once on his boat.
One technique used in Australia and Japan involves placing a pole at the stern of the boat, from which streamers dangle out 150 yards or more. The movement of the streamers in the wind keeps the birds away from the bait as the hooks are set.
According to Cook and others, fishermen in Hawai`i are unlikely to use the so-called bird line until they see others using it — or until they are forced to. Cook suggested placing a bird pole on one or two boats in the fleet, which would also have an observer present to make an accurate log of the bird bycatch.
Handouts at the workshop included a booklet, “Catching Fish, not Birds,” by Nigel Brothers (published by the Tasmanian Department of Parks and Wildlife). The booklets were purchased in bulk by the Fishery Management Council. The council also had the booklet translated into Vietnamese and Korean. Copies of these translations were available also, free of charge.
Volume 7, Number 4 October 1996