‘Extinct in three generations’: Albatross to miss key protections

Fisheries New Zealand is leaning towards marginally improving protections for seabirds that are regularly killed as by-catch by surface longline fishing vessels, but environmentalists say the move isn’t nearly enough.

In a July briefing to then-Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Rachel Brooking, officials laid out Fisheries New Zealand’s preferred approach to regulating new mitigation measures that fishers must undertake to prevent by-catch. The Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries or an official of his choice is empowered to make a final decision.

Newsroom understands a final decision is due to be announced in the coming weeks and the current minister, Shane Jones, said he does not have a position on the issue and won’t interfere with whatever Fisheries NZ decides.

The move comes after regulations set in 2019 were reviewed after three years in operation. Those rules required longline surface vessels, which target pelagic species like tuna and swordfish, to either fit hook-shielding devices to their lines to prevent seabirds from being accidentally hooked or to adopt two out of three alternate measures: weighted branch lines, setting lines at night or using tori (or bird-scaring) lines.

Additional, recommended voluntary measures include using three out of three of the alternate measures as well as undertaking other practices like minimising the number of birds that land on boat decks and reducing the discharge of fish waste during the highest-risk time periods. These voluntary measures are aligned with international best practice recommended by the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels and were pushed for by New Zealand in international negotiations.

The review of the 2019 regulations found the voluntary, best practice measures are not widely used and that the estimates of seabird captures by the surface longline fleet haven’t changed since the new rules were introduced.

Estimates of actual seabird deaths due to by-catch by this fleet are unreliable because only five to 10 percent of voyages have had Fisheries NZ observers. Annually, around 200 white-capped albatross and Southern Buller’s albatross are estimated to die as a result of longline fishing activities. Other bird species see mortality in the dozens.

Some species are more vulnerable to surface longline fleets than others. Over 80 percent of the Gibson’s and Antipodean albatross fatalities attributed to domestic commercial fisheries happen on these vessels.

“The evidence shows that New Zealand is a seabird hotspot, including for extremely high-risk species. Antipodean albatrosses will be extinct in three generations if nothing is done,” Stephanie Borrelle, Birdlife International’s Pacific marine coordinator, told Newsroom.

Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, World Wildlife Fund NZ’s chief executive, expressed similar concern.

“The Antipodean albatross is nationally critical. The Gibson’s albatross is nationally critical. We’re down to, like, 5100 breeding pairs in terms of the Antipodean albatross and we’ve lost about a third of them in the last decade. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if we don’t do something more about by-catch, that species will be extinct in the next two decades.”

In the 2021/22 year, 55 seabird captures were observed by Fisheries NZ observers on the surface longline fleet and vessels self-reported another 208 captures. However, observers covered only 6 percent of the total surface longline fleet effort that year, suggesting the true number of captures could be much closer to 1000.

Between March and May last year, Fisheries NZ ran a public consultation on four options to respond to the findings of the review. These were to maintain the status quo, to regulate additional technical measures, to mandate “three out of three” rules in certain fisheries areas at certain times of year or to mandate “three out of three” rules at all times.

Environmental groups were strongly supportive of options two and four, while the fishing industry said none of the options were ideal but that option three was the most workable.

The July briefing, obtained by Newsroom under the Official Information Act, shows Fisheries NZ’s preferred options after consultation were two and three.

“A balanced, risk-based approach to [surface longline] seabird mitigation is proposed,” officials wrote. “This ‘spatial/temporal/approach will provide greater protection to seabirds while also taking into account the impacts on fishing operations.”

The Department of Conservation told Brooking in a separate briefing that it disagreed and recommended options two and four instead.

“Estimates of total potential fatalities of seabirds in the domestic [surface longline] fleet have remained consistently high for many years despite the implementation of voluntary initiatives. This suggests that a stronger regulatory approach is necessary to enact change and reduce the risk of further seabird captures,” conservation officials advised.

“To date, no robust evidence has been presented that would suggest implementing Option 4 would be detrimental to fishing operations. To the contrary, testing of various combinations of mitigation with Hookpods found no effect on target catch.”

Tiff Bock, the general manager of inshore fisheries at Seafood New Zealand, told Newsroom the industry didn’t support any of the consultation options but that the third option was “the one we could see the most benefit in”.

The industry could “support in principle, but we believe the proposed changes need to be industry initiated as part of fishery specific operational procedures to reduce risk to all protected species. We always want to improve our practices, and it is only fishers on the water that can innovate in a way that allows them to catch fish while avoiding interacting with seabirds.

“We want to see effective measures in place to help seabirds and our concern is that regulations that create a ‘one-size fits all approach’ across the various surface long line fisheries will be counter-productive to proactive engagement and uptake of additional mitigation measures, above and beyond the regulatory requirements in this fleet.”

The best practice mitigation measures “should be a voluntary toolbox that fishers could use and innovate with, in response to particular circumstances that present a risk to seabirds. However, to some these have become interpreted as pseudo-regulations.”

Kingdon-Bebb said option three was bound to fail because seabirds travel widely – particularly with climate change disrupting known feeding patterns – and won’t stick to just the narrow zones identified as higher risk. Data provided to Newsroom by WWF NZ shows the albatross are regularly detected well outside those high risk zones.

“When we look at the changes that we’re likely to see with continued climatic disruption, marine heatwaves, etcetera, applying a spatial-temporal approach with very little observer coverage or data full stop, I think it’s just unworkable,” she said.

“If we’re going to be seeing these birds foraging differently, why would we be trying to pinpoint specific fisheries management areas at specific times when we know their patterns are going to be changing anyway.”

Borrelle said applying “three out of three” rules everywhere was necessary to start with, at least until the rollout of on-board cameras produces more reliable data about by-catch and the highest-risk locations and time periods.

“It just is crazy to go with an approach that doesn’t have enough evidence to say that it will work. I think a precautionary approach, and this is based on the science and evidence from the Department of Conservation as well, is we have to do three out of three everywhere until such a time as we have enough data to demonstrate that we can shift down to a spatial-temporal approach,” she said.

“And if the vessels are implementing three out of three in some areas, there’s no reason at all for them not to be able to implement them everywhere. It should just become operational practice that they’re doing these measures. And if they don’t want to do night setting and line weighting and tori lines, then they can use hook-shielding devices all by themselves. To argue that it’s going to be too much, DoC have been giving out hook-shielding devices, they’ve been giving them away to vessels. There’s just no excuse anymore.”

Bock said that, regardless of the outcomes of the consultation, the industry would take some measures themselves.

“What we are committed to doing, as an integral component of any new regime, is developing and implementing formal, fishery specific operational procedures. These might be similar to those implemented for the East Coast South Island southern bluefin fishery last year,” she said.

“Regarding cameras and monitoring, although onboard cameras are expensive, the fleet has welcomed their use for the purpose of transparency and also requested several times to be bumped up as a priority fleet to receive cameras earlier than scheduled by MPI.”

Kingdon-Bebb said she too would urge the ministry to continue and accelerate the camera rollout.

“Our estimation is that, were we to see full coverage of cameras on boats, it is likely that we would see a significant increase in incidences recorded of protected species by-catch. With that in mind, I ask the question, if we were as a country to see that we are catching more of these species than we know or than are currently being reported, would that change our decision-making on this?” she said.

“If we knew that we were hammering the Antipodean albatross to extinction at a rate that we previously did not understand, would that change our decision-making on these issues? Are we as a country prepared to watch that species go extinct?”