Supporting the transition to seabird-safe tuna fishing

At a panel co-hosted by SFP with the Southern Seabird Trust, Janice Molloy, convener of the Trust, a partnership of New Zealand industry, NGOs, and government, spoke about the risks that fishing presents to the Antipodean wandering albatross. Since 2005, about 60% of the population has been lost, almost entirely through bycatch on longline albacore tuna vessels. The albatrosses are particularly at risk when hooks are being set, before they sink out of reach of the birds.

However, the good news, said Mandy Leathers, a senior advisor to the New Zealand Department of Conservation, is that “we know there are solutions and we know they work.” Approaches such as weighting hooks, or using bird scaring lines or Hookpods can reduce bycatch to almost zero if they are implemented consistently and effectively.

The Southern Seabird Trust is working to understand and eliminate one of the key barriers to implementation – inaccessible and hard to find information – through the creation of the Seabird Safe Fishing Toolkit, which brings all the information together in one place. Through our Protecting Ocean Wildlife program, SFP works to get such information to the industry so they can act. “There are lots of competing issues for the seafood industry,” said SFP Biodiversity & Nature Director Kathryn Novak, “so the more accessible and easy we can make it for them to find solutions, the better.”