Catch fish not birds

At times seabirds are so prolific it’s hard to imagine they are in decline right around the globe, including New Zealand.

New Zealand has one of the most diverse seabird faunas in the world. Straddling the Roaring Forties where the cold, nutrient-rich water of the Southern Ocean mingles with warmer water from temperate and tropical regions makes the sea surrounding New Zealand a rich feeding ground for birds. With a relatively small human population and a multitude of mostly undisturbed offshore islands ideally suited to seabird nesting, New Zealand has maintained higher seabird populations than many other countries. However, bird numbers are a fraction of what they once were. Thirty indigenous seabird species are classified as endangered and many more are in serious decline or threatened.

GLOBAL SEABIRD CRISIS

The biggest threats to seabirds include changes to the distribution and abundance of food as a result of global warming, the destruction of breeding sites and soaring mortality caused by commercial fishing.

Fishing kills millions of seabirds every year through accidental capture/collateral damage and from starvation due to competition with human fishers for food.

Another serious threat to seabirds is pollution, particularly plastics pollution. Many sea birds ingest plastic objects mistaking them for food, or eat fish that have eaten plastic. Plastic is indigestible and has no food value, but it fills the bird’s gut fooling it that it has eaten enough.

A belly full of plastic interferes with its ability to digest food and plastic objects can block the bowel, resulting in a slow death from infection. Adult birds often mistakenly feed plastic pieces to their growing chicks, many of which die of starvation in the nest.

In New Zealand plastic waste is not yet the huge problem it is in some parts of the world, but fishing and nest site destruction continue to impact our seabirds. Most mainland nesting sites are no longer viable for many species of seabirds because of deforestation and the presence of mammalian predators. Predator-free offshore islands have become vital seabird refuges.

THE IMPACT OF FISHING

Fishing takes a fearsome toll on seabirds. Recreational fishing is less destructive than large-scale commercial fishing, but many inshore seabird species such as shags, shearwaters and gannets are accidentally hooked or tangled in recreational fishing gear.

It can be very difficult to avoid hooking seabirds in certain situations. Diving petrels and shearwaters are especially hard to avoid. Totally fearless, they dive deep after baited hooks and regularly hook themselves. Shags are also vulnerable, attacking live baits or hooked fish, while gannets dive-bomb lures, baits and hooked fish, hooking themselves in the process.

Mollymawks and albatrosses, while they don’t dive, are large enough to attack the biggest of baits. Fearsome scavengers, they are undaunted by bait type or size, boats or people.

Seabirds that die from injuries sustained when caught up in fishing gear often leave behind chicks in the nest, which starve to death.

SEABIRD-SMART FISHING

Recreational fishers can reduce seabird by-catch by changing how they fish. Hungry birds are attracted by the sight and smell of food, so avoid feeding birds while you are fishing and don’t leave baited hooks on deck. Gulls in particular are notorious for taking baits on the fly from rods left unattended in holders.

In areas where birds are a real problem, charter operators sometimes keep bait scraps and discarded baits in a covered bin, disposing of them over the side only when fishing has stopped. This is a ploy recreational fishers could easily adopt. The down side is that this strategy prevents discarded baits from being used as berley to attract fish to the boat.

Berley attracts fish but it also rings the dinner gong for seabirds. Berley administered at the surface is the worst culprit, drawing birds from miles away. Deploying berley at depth using a suspended berley pot or similar attracts fewer birds and is a much better method.

‘Chunking’ or cubing, where small pieces of cut fish are dropped into the water one at a time to create a trail, while very effective at attracting and holding fish, can be both frustrating for fishers and irresistible to diving birds. Sometimes birds intercept every chunk before it has time to sink and the chances of getting a bait past them unmolested is negligible.

There are a couple of ways to prevent every chunk in the trail feeding birds instead of fish. The simplest is to drop them into the water on the downwind side of the boat so they disappear under the hull. That way cubes have a chance to sink out of diving range before they become visible again on the other side of the boat.

A more reliable method is to deploy a long tube thrust into the water. Cubes dropped into the tube don’t attract the attention of birds until they emerge at the other end. By the time the birds notice them they should be deep enough to be out of diving range.

Sadly such techniques don’t solve the problem of deploying hook baits without risking catching birds. Diving birds often swim down faster than anglers can sink their baits and they also attack the same baits as they are drawn back towards the surface.

Most of the strategies for reducing accidental seabird capture revolve around using enough weight to sink baits beyond the reach of diving birds as quickly as possible or distracting/scaring birds long enough for the bait to descend unmolested.

Some of the strategies and techniques were adapted from those developed to reduce seabird by-catch in commercial fisheries. New Zealand enforces fairly strict controls over commercial fishing methods to mitigate seabird mortality.

SCARE TACTICS

Among them are various bird-scaring devices, many incorporating streamers or tapes to create a clear, bird exclusion zone anglers can fish into. These devices can be improvised from a spare rod or an

outrigger, some line, plastic ribbon and/or plastics bags and bottles.

Southern Seabirds Trust suggests a milk bottle half-filled with water and tied to an outrigger or a spare rod with streamers on it to create an area that birds won’t come in to. The noise and motion keeps birds away.

It may seem odd, but seabirds don’t like to be splashed with water. Throwing a bucket of seawater over them or squirting them with the deck wash sends individual birds packing, at least long enough to safely deploy a baited hook. It’s simple to do and very effective.

You can try fishing early morning or at night when seabirds are less numerous. Using artificial baits/lures is another successful strategy, although seabirds occasionally mistake artificial baits for the real thing and become hooked. Gannets will occasionally dive on trolled lures or stick baits and shags sometimes bite soft baits, but diving petrels usually ignore them.

Casting lures or baits into flocks of feeding seabirds should be avoided. Even if you don’t accidentally hook a bird there’s every chance one might tangle in your line. B