Safeguards introduced to protect seabirds from longline fishing activities are successfully reducing the number of accidental birds kill. Experts believe that similar measures should be used in other forms of industrial fishing in areas where seabirds are at greatest risk. Official figures of FAO revealed that collateral damage to seabirds by Chilean longline fisheries dropped from 1600 kills – including 1500 Albatrosses — in 2002 to zero in 2006.
In southern Ocean around Antarctica there is a significant progress where bird kills went from 6500 in 1996 to zero in 2007 and in Australian waters, where unintentional seabird “bycatches” dropped from 2000 to 200. Measures were taken to minimize the impact of fishing on seabirds, particularly albatrosses and petrels are currently being implemented or in an advanced state of preparation in ten countries – South Africa, Australia, Chile, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Uruguay and the United States, Argentina and Namibia.
The measures are contained in National Plans of Action, or NPOAs operated by individual countries under an International Plan of Action (IPOA) for Reducing the Incidental Catch of Seabirds in Longline Fisheries developed by FAO and approved by member countries in 1999. FAO Senior Fishery Officer Francis Chopin said that as the industry and the government working as partners the impacts of fishing can be greatly reduced.
In Chilean longline fishing one effective form of protection now being used called “umbrella system” in which the hooks are set in bunches shrouded by cone-shaped net sleeves that prevent birds from taking the bait when the longlines are dropped overboard.
