The Fisheries Agency recently announced an updated national action plan to stop albatrosses being accidentally caught by deep-sea fishing vessels. It first unveiled such an action plan in 2006.
Three new measures—use of weighted branch fishing lines, bird-scaring lines and nighttime line-laying—have been proposed by the agency.
“Fishermen will be mandated to use at least two of the three methods to reduce seabird bycatch,” Fisheries Agency Director-General James Sha said.
Adding weight to the baited line makes it sink before albatrosses can dive to swallow the bait. Nighttime line-laying ensures the birds cannot see the bait at all.
“The bird-scaring line is brightly colored and emits noise, so it will keep the albatrosses away,” said Yeh Yu-min, a professor at Chiayi County-based Nanhua University.
Taiwan has about 2,000 deep-sea fishing vessels plying the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Many of them are longliners, used for catching tuna, with baited branch lines at regular intervals.
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, up to 200,000 albatrosses are caught by fishermen annually. Although albatrosses can live for up to 60 years, the female lays only one egg per year.
“Of the 22 species of albatross, 17 of them are in danger of extinction,” said Taiwan-based Chinese Wild Bird Federation Chairman Lin Shih-chung. He added that the Fisheries Agency should train more fishing monitors and provide additional education on the issue to fishermen in port. With time, he thinks the albatross population will gradually recover.
A survey by professor Huang Hsiang-wen of the Department of Harbor and River Engineering at National Taiwan Ocean University found that Taiwan’s deep-ocean fleet caught 6,142 albatrosses a decade ago, but the figure had dropped to 761 in 2012, showing fishermen have upped their effort to avoid seabird bycatch. (SDH)
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