Spytech albatrosses patrolling for illegal fishers
WELLINGTON: Groups of albatrosses have taken a turn into espionage, patrolling the seas looking for illegal fishers as part of a study led by researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
About 200 of the birds were fitted with GPS trackers in the hope they would come across vessels operating where they should not be.
Study lead author Henri Weimerskirch said albatrosses turned out to be perfect candidates for the spying mission.
‘‘They are covering extensive distances in the Southern Ocean — 107km in single day — and they are very attracted by boats, especially fishing boats. [They] are, in fact, our ideal model to obtain information on the location of fisheries.’’
The birds were fitted with stateoftheart loggers with a GPS attachment that detected the radar emissions of boats. When a boat was detected, the location was recorded on the logger and sent back on a satellite, allowing the team to obtain its location within minutes.
There were initially concerns the albatrosses could be outed as spies and become targets for fishers wanting to protect themselves from detection but Dr Weimerskirch said that was not too much of a worry.
‘‘The logger is very discreet on the bird, same colour, so they are very difficult to spot on the back of the bird,’’ he said.
‘‘Also . . . the albatrosses they are hundreds of birds or thousands of birds around a single fishing boat and the seas very rough. So it’s very unlikely that a fisherman can spot easily a bird equipped with a logger in the crowd of the other birds.’’
The study was published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study authors said they believed the technology had useful applications for conservation. — RNZ