Fishing forum seeks ways to keep birds, turtles safe from longlines
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
More than 200 people — including fishing operators, conservationists and biologists from across the globe — are meeting at the Hawai'i Convention Center this week to discuss how to stop the injuring and killing of seabirds and turtles by the longline fishing industry.
The Annual International Fishers Forum is the second of its kind. The first was held in New Zealand in 2000, and initiatives from that conference helped develop United Nations resolutions that could eventually protect the oceans of the world from unsafe fishing practices, said Satya Nandan, secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority.
"Fishing has become a major problem throughout the world," Nandan said, "and illegal practices are difficult to enforce."
Bad fishing practices are dangerously reducing the world's food supply, Nandan said. The sheer number of boats operating in the world's oceans create problems that could wipe out endangered populations of turtles and birds.
The Pacific Ocean, with more than 18,000 longline fishing vessels, has the largest and most troublesome fleet, officials said. The vessels severely outnumber several endangered populations of turtles and birds.
By contrast, fewer than 3,000 longline vessels operate in the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean is fished by only 300 longline vessels.
One partial solution to the threat to endangered species by fishing is education, said Janice Molloy of New Zealand's Department of Conservation. Fishing boats that operate legally in the South Pacific, once they knew mediation measures existed, last year were able to reduce injuries to birds from the thousands to 27, and the kill count to zero.
Illegal fishing operations in the same area are thought to have injured or killed nearly 100,000 birds, according to the New Zealand estimates.
Practices to reduce the number of bird injuries and deaths include trailing brightly colored lines looped with a series of long rubber flaps on each side of the baited and hooked longlines. Called tori lines or streamer lines, the devices frighten birds away from the sinking hooks.
Kim Trust of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service demonstrated tori lines yesterday at the forum and handed out coupons to fishermen for free tori line kits from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission.
Shawn Dick of Aquatic Release Conservation demonstrated devices he developed that allow fishermen to safely remove hooks from turtles that have swallowed them. The devices, called ARC Dehookers, are on long poles that are also useful for removing sharks from hooks and lines without endangering the fishing crews.
Several of the guest speakers at the forum — which included John Cooper of the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Colin Limpus of Queensland Parks and Wildlife in Australia, German conservationist Douglas Hykle and Jim Cook of Pacific Oceans Producers in Hawai'i — said some of the new technologies hold great promise for protecting turtles and birds.
Doug Israel, an environmentalist from the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, said it is too little too late.
"The sort of experimentation they are discussing could take 20 years to implement," he said. "By that time, there will be no leatherback turtles left."
Populations of nesting leatherback turtles in some areas in the Pacific have diminished from 1,367 in 1988 to to 68 this year, he said.
The Sea Turtle Restoration Project, in league with a number of other environmental agencies and more than 500 international biologists, is asking the United Nations to institute a moratorium on all longline fishing in the Pacific, he said.
The Second International Fishers Forum continues through Friday at the Convention Center.
Reach Karen Blakeman at kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2430.
