Flight risk

A veteran scientist who fears for the fate of an astonishing NZ albatross says we can quickly counter one threat - commercial fishing.

- PETA CAREY

“Bycatch” is becoming a well-known dirty word. In a recent video for UK conservation group Blue Marine Foundation, actor Theo James plays a customer ordering so-called sustainable fish at a restaurant. Stephen Fry, playing a wry waiter, serves the dish but then drops an entire net of bycatch over the table and horrified customer. The sequence was echoed at last month's United Nations Oceans Conference in France, footage, including from New Zealand, of bottom trawlers dragging across the ocean floor leaving a wasteland: delicate corals, shellfish, marine mammals and a multitude of non-target species among the oily debris.

But there’s another quota of bycatch that’s missing — seabirds. It’s not just the baited lines of fishing boats that account for the loss of tens of thousands of albatrosses every year, but the cables of deep-sea trawlers catching unsuspecting seabirds on the wing.

Amid the staggering injustice of Gaza, Ukraine and other war zones, it may seem indulgent to talk about seabirds. But Fry, James and, not least, Sir David Attenborough - whose film on bottom trawling, Ocean, was a hot topic at the UN conference - make it permissible.

It's also timely, as New Zealand's Fisheries Minister, Shane Jones, seeks changes to our Fisheries Act, including further restricting public access to footage from government-owned onboard cameras, the release of which is already subject to Official Information Act red tape. The prospect of it being publicly released arguably incentivises steps to minimise what Jones calls the “unfortunate” taking of bycatch, be it non-target fish, dolphin, seal or albatross. The proposed law change would remove the ability of the media and lobby groups to request footage under the OIA.

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