Newly touted measures to protect sea birds from longlines are not really all that new. What is new is that more countries are adopting simple measures like streamers, weighted lines and setting hooks at night.
This sounds like one of those good news environmental stories, doesn’t it? Fishermen adopting simple, inexpensive measures to protect wildlife. But sometimes the heart of the story lies beneath the press releases.
According to a NOAA story:
In November, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas adopted a requirement that the European Commission and 44 other nations use special gear and techniques to reduce the unintended catch of seabirds.
And…
In December, the European Commission and 24 fishing nations that make up the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission set technical specifications for the use of bird-scaring lines and other techniques that help fishermen avoid hooking seabirds by accident.
Longlining has a long history of killing sea birds. According to Birdlife International:
More than 300,000 seabirds are killed in this way each year. 26 species of seabird, including 17 species of albatrosses, are in danger of extinction because of the deaths caused by longlining.
In the waters off Antarctica, these sea bird protection measures have proven effective having reduced the catch of seabirds by 90%.
So you might be wondering what’s the problem then?
Longlines are not just about sea birds.
Longlines are one of the main threats to leatherback sea turtles. Longline fishing has been identified as one of the main causes of the precipitous decline of nesting leatherbacks in the Pacific: from 91,000 in 1980 to fewer than 3,000 today. Flapping banners will do nothing to prevent the capture of leatherbacks on longline hooks.
And additionally, it is the question of effort that needs to be addressed. Every year, longliners set more than 1.4 baited hooks in the Pacific according to the Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
It is a bit of a card shuffling game to tout the percent that sea bird or sea turtle bycatch might be reduced when fishing effort is so high and the population of an endangered species is so low. When there are only 3,000 nesting leatherbacks left, the percentage not caught is not as important as the actual number caught, and that number will only be reduced when fishing effort is reduced.
And bycatch is not the only fall out from over capacity of fishing fleets including longliners. Worldwide we are seeing declines of blue fin, yellow fin, and big eye tuna. And as fish stocks decline, industrial fishing operations move to other areas bringing with them a wave of destruction that means fewer fish and increasing impacts on coastal communities that depend on healthy fish populations.
Until we begin to address the excess capacity of fishing fleets, all the band aid solutions might do is buy us a little time before we empty out our oceans.
