Fieldwork Archives | Seabird Task Force

Lights burn bright but no fish in sight

By Tomasz Linkowski & Anetta Ameryk, Polish National Marine Fisheries Research Institute NMFRI

The weather was fine but unfortunately the same could not be said about the fish. For over six months, fish have been “swept away” from the Puck Bay region. Fishers are constantly going out at sea, most of the time coming back empty-handed. Unfortunately, despite the lack of fish, we have still recorded some cases of seabird bycatch. We took the chance to try out our latest measures to keep seabirds out of gillnets!

As the catches were unprofitable, if it wasn’t for the project agreement, it’s very likely the fishers would have left ports much less frequently – but this was really an opportunity for us to check whether the net lights faced any operational issues in deployment.

Seabird bycatch was recorded despite the lack of fish, highlighting the importance to optimize our proposed measures to tackle the problem © Anetta Ameryk/Morski Instytut Rybacki

We had hoped to do similar testing with the West Pomeranian coastal fleet targetting herring, but this fleet had already switched on to fishing other species. Therefore in that region we will undertake all our studies in the autumn and winter of 2016/17.

The first light we tried out with the Puck Bay fleet was the YML-1000 lights we described in the previous entry. In the video below, you can see the fishermen attaching the lights to the nets.

Unfortunately, the lamps do seem to be affecting the fishing operations considerably. The boats need to slow down when deploying and retrieving the nets. When we deploy the nets, each lamp has to be held by hand in order to prevent them from hooking on the meshes below (see video below).

On top of that, when retrieving, it is necessary to hold the lights so as not to hit the deck which might risk damaging.

Over the summer, we’ll discuss these issues with other projects that have deployed net lights to see if there are helpful ways to work around the difficulties and speed up the operation.

In more encouraging news, after 240 hours of use, which is the time the nets were in the water, the lamps powered by two AA batteries were still shining. Battery life will be a very important part of the economic efficiency of this measure. And it is not only the cost of the battery, but the time needed to replace them through the entire set of nets.

Based on these initial results, it was clear it would be challenging to obtain statistically verifiable data on seabird bycatch for the time being. After 10 cruises, while it was useful to examine the operational issues with our measures, we decided to cease observations for the season.

The rest of the studies will be conducted at the end of this year or at the beginning of 2017. Feel free to sign up if you don’t want to miss our updates!

Poland

The Seabid Task Force starts on-board surveys on Spanish long-liners to assess seabird by catch

After some weeks of continuous northern winds, the 2^nd and 3^rd of March the first STF surveys on-board of demersal long-liners in Spain were conducted. One observer of SEO/BirdLife shipped on a demersal long-liner based in Llançà, one of northernmost Catalan harbours next to the Spanish-French border. The main target of the fishing boat was the Blackspot seabream Pagellus bogaraveo. These first surveys were worth improving the methodology, getting familiar with it and collecting the first data. We characterised the fishing gear configuration and effort and observed no seabird bycatch. We also enjoyed of a very tasty on-board meal, which was worth recovering strength and knowing the fishermen from a personal point of view.

Black legged kitty-wake *Rissa tridactyla* following the vessel during the operations

Only very few Yellow-legged gulls Larus michahellis, Mediterranen gulls L. melanocephalus and Kittywakes Rissa tridactyla followed the vessel during the operations. Seabirds ate discarded baits and one kittiwake stole one bait when setting but was not hooked. The shearwaters (only Mediterranean, Puffinus yelkouan) were very scarce during the operations, and most individuals were observed in coastal waters when returning to port.

During the following weeks we will keep contacting long-liner skippers and continue with on-board observations.

Spain

Autumn and winter in the field

[Turimas lietuviy]

The Lithuanian Ornithological Society together with Birdlife international is involved in actions to reduce seabird bycatch in gillnet fisheries. Our field work this autumn and winter has focused on working together with local fishermen to trial some new types of fishing nets. Instead of using normal fishing nets we are trying modified gillnets for cod fisheries. The nets are modified by changing the upper part of the net to be more visible by using nylon.Diving birds should have better visualization while diving to see these nets.

The aim of the study is not to ban the coastal gillnet fishery but to reduce bird bycatch without altering the fishery significantly.

In Lithuania, the project team – three bird observers/specialists – have honed their skills to learn about fish species. The reason for this is that our team join the local cod fishermen on board their boats on trips to the open sea to collect data on fish catch and bird bycatch. Our team is counting the different fish species caught in our modified fishing nets and from regular nets, measuring and weighing the fish catch. The aim is to look if there is a difference in fish catch depending on net type.

In autumn, there is an intensive fishery for cod along the Lithuanian coast, and many coastal fishermen are targeting this species, so lots of our survey work was done during autumn. The winter period is more difficult as the fishermen are changing their fish target from cod to smelt. The weather conditions in winter also became problematic. When temperature falls below -10 C (14F) the Baltic Sea begins freezing over, and nets become covered by sea ice.

In our next blog post we will provide additional detail on our field season, preliminary findings and next steps.

Lithuania