Anchorage Daily News

Albatross looking for a free meal on the high seas often pay the ultimate price of being drowned, injured or killed going after baited hooks.

Now, with numbers declining for the birds that can spend years at sea, fishing fleets around the world have agreed to use measures to prevent hooking albatross and other seabirds.

The measures -- which include using streamer lines to haze birds away from the stern of boats as miles of baited hooks are being set and dying bait blue to conceal it in dark water -- will go into effect this year in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

"Some of the most vulnerable seabird populations travel entire oceans in search of food," NOAA administrator Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher said. "Seabird conservation will require nations with longline fishing fleets to work together to adapt their fishing practices to avoid seabirds whenever they fish."

Albatross are particularly vulnerable to being hooked on longlines used to catch tuna, swordfish and other ocean fish. Their long search for food that takes them across international waters makes it imperative that the community of nations with longline fishing fleets abide by certain practices, NOAA officials say.

The measures agreed on by several commissions that govern high-seas fishing require fleets from more than 30 nations to use certain practices to avoid killing the birds. The practices will vary depending upon what works best and where, said Kim Rivera, national seabird coordinator for NOAA Fisheries' Alaska region office in Juneau.

"You have birds that are attracted to the fishing vessels because they see it as a feeding opportunity. The birds congregate there. They see it as a free meal," Rivera said. "They clue in on the baited hook and go after it."

NIGHT FISHING

The measures go into effect this year in the Atlantic, with a longer phase-in period in the Pacific. Nations with large fleets that have agreed to the measures include Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

Techniques that could be used for tuna and swordfish in the Atlantic include fishing at night when birds are less active, weighting fishing lines so the baited hooks sink more quickly and using long streamers.

"Those streamers whip around and basically scare the birds away," Rivera said.

Similar techniques will be used in the Pacific, with some longliners required to fish at night and others being prohibited from discharging fish waste at the same time as baited hooks are being set.

"There is really no one single measure that works 100 percent of the time," Rivera said.

In Antarctica, where the Commission on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources became the first international organization to require the measures, as many as 6,000 albatross a year were being incidentally caught in the late 1990s.

The commission has been very successful in preventing the hooking of several types of albatross in the Antarctic, Rivera said. No albatross have been unintentionally caught there in the last two years.

In the United States, only Alaska and Hawaii require their longliners to use antihooking measures. NOAA is looking into whether similar measures are needed off the Washington and Oregon coasts.

SUCCESS IN ALASKA

Alaska's longline fishermen began using streamer lines in the late 1990s and have found them to be very effective, said Dan Falvey, captain of the Myriad out of Sitka, who helped design the lines for smaller vessels.

Streamer lines are attached to the stern and extend out 150 to 300 feet behind the boat. Many times vessels will use a streamer line on either end of the stern, creating a box that the longlines are set inside. Long strings of orange surgical tubing are placed every 15 or 20 feet along the streamer line with the tubing extending to the surface of the water.

"What it creates is a moving fence around the gear that is being set and the birds are afraid to cross it," Falvey said.

The new international agreement is particularly significant for three species of albatross found in the North Pacific Ocean. One of those, the short-tailed albatross that breeds only in Japan, is listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The large black and white birds with cream-colored heads and distinctive pink bills with a bluish tip, have a worldwide population of about 2,300 birds.

There used to be between 2 million and 5 million short-tailed albatross but commercial feather hunting at the turn of the last century decimated the population. The feathers were used primarily for bedding, quilts and coats. Eventually, it was thought the birds were extinct.

Then, in 1939 there was a volcanic eruption on Torishima Island, home to the breeding colony about 360 miles south of Tokyo. If it hadn't been for young birds at sea, it could have been the end for the short-tailed albatross. Now, the population is increasing.

Rivera said an effort is under way to try and establish breeding colonies on nonvolcanic islands in Japan.

The black-footed albatross with a worldwide population of between 250,000 and 300,000 is being considered for ESA listing. The Laysan albatross has a stable population of 2.5 million to 3 million birds. Both species breed in Hawaii.

www.iccat.int/contracting.htm

www.nmfs.noaa.gov

www.wcpfc.int

ccamlr.org

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