Fishing Archives | Seabird Task Force

Seabird Task Force sets sail in Portugal

By Ana Almeida, Marine Conservation Officer at SPEA (BirdLife in Portugal).

Although accidental bycatch of seabirds is still largely unknown in Portugal, there are evidences from pioneering studies that prove that gillnets, longlines and purse seines are the fishing gear with the biggest impact. This is why BirdLife International, along with SPEA, is going to test some innovative mitigation measures to reduce seabird bycatch, never tried before in the Atlantic.

We will learn from the experience of our colleagues in Lithuania trialing high contrast panels. These will be attached to the nets, and hopefully will make it more visible for the birds, allowing them to swim around the nets, and avoiding being caught and consequently drown.

High contrast panels will be one of the measures we will try to tackle seabird bycatch.

We are now preparing all the logistic side of things in order to be ready to deploy the modified nets in the water in the next winter, since that is the crucial period for bycatch in Portugal.

This preparation takes much more work than it seems at first sight. We have to find the right materials to build the panels for them to be resistant in saltwater. Then we have to actually build them and we will need a big number of them since the panels are placed every 4 meters in the nets!

Where will we work?

Berlengas is a small archipelago located about 10 km off Peniche in central Portugal. Its geographic location converges both Atlantic and Mediterranean temperate climates, which, associated with the intense seasonal upwelling described for the area, is the basis of a high biological productivity area.

In fact, Berlengas archipelago surrounding is one of the richest marine ecosystems across Portuguese coastal waters. This underlies the fact for Peniche being one of Portugal´s most important fishing port, whether measured in terms of the volume of landings or the total numbers of fishers.

Peniche has a diversified fleet in which the small scale fisheries represents a significant proportion, with set gillnets, pots and demersal longlining being some of the main fishing gears.

Being such a productive area, it supports the Berlengas breeding population of Cory´s Shearwater (Calonectris borealis) as well as a large number of migratory and wintering seabirds such as the endangered Balearic Shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus), Razorbill (Alca torda) and Common Murre (Uria aalge).

This spatial overlapping between fisheries and seabirds, make this area an important target for tackling seabird bycatch.

Cory’s Shearwater is one of the species incidentally caught in fishing lines © Pedro Geraldes

Working with fishers

All this work has to be done in close collaboration with fishers, and taking in consideration their own expertise. Moreover, this project not only will test the mitigation measures and its efficiency reducing bycatch, but will also analyze how practicable the measures are, from an economic point of view.

This means that we are looking for mitigation measures that reduce bycatch, but do not reduce fish catches. For that, we will have to measure different economic variables and carefully plan all the data we will be collecting on the vessels.

We look forward to starting the real work at sea, and look forward to letting you know about the results!

Portugal

Shedding light on seabird bycatch

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

For the first time in EU waters, we want to test net lighting in Polish gillnet fisheries to minimise seabird bycatch, thanks to a new project coordinated by BirdLife International and funded by the European Commission to specifically look at gillnet bycatch mitigation. As part of BirdLife’s existing work in the Baltic (Lithuania), testing of net panels is already being carried out, so it only made sense to examine the efficacy of an alternate measure in Poland. While it was relatively easy to come up with a solution, actually implementing it turned out to be a challenge!

At the beginning of December, we decided together with BirdLife International that due to light conditions prevailing in the winter season in the the South Baltic, net lighting instead of the high contrast panels (see below) already tested in Lithuania should be more effective in protecting birds against their accidental bycatch in gillnets.

High contrast panel being tried out in Lithuania.
Fish luring lights used in the net lighting measures in Poland.

Images above: On the left, fish luring lights used in the net lighting measures in Poland. On the right, high contrast panel being tried out in Lithuania.

The effectiveness of lamps produced by the Korean company CENTRO had already been documented to reduce seabird bycatch in the Southern Pacific. So why would the same measures not be as effective in the Baltic? Once the decision was taken, we thought it’d be easy enough to start trying out the idea.

It turned out CENTRO lamps were not available either in Europe or at the manufacturer in Korea in time to start our project in the present season. In the end, we only managed to buy two pieces of CENTRO lights so we had to look for alternatives. We successfully found appropriate lights and after some trouble we managed to buy 350 lamps of Korean production type YML-1000 (photo below) of a very similar design and parameters with respect to the original CENTRO product.

Lights © Anetta Ameryk/Morski Instytut Rybacki

Once we had the lamps in our hands, we came across another issue. The proposed lamps had been developed for longline or angler catches of swordfish, so adapting them for our project needs was not so obvious. Luckily, we eventually got around that issue too!

Mounting the lights © Anetta Ameryk/Morski Instytut Rybacki

The lamps reached the NMFRI in mid-February and they were immediately installed on previously prepared net sets by owners of two boats with whom the NMFRI had earlier signed relevant agreements on cooperation within the project.

After negotiations with fishermen, they considered that they could try with automatic lamps which should not significantly slow down the process of fishing and would hopefully be effective in minimizing seabird bycatch.

The lamps have been installed by each fisher on two sets of nets with a length of approx. 300 m. Two identical net sets have been left with no lights as control sets. The next step will be to examine any operational issues with the lights so we can eventually deploy them in big numbers.

Now that we are ready to set sail, we are eager to share our next steps with you!

Poland