PREVENTING THE NEEDLESS SLAUGHTER OF THE ALBATROSS

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The following is paraphrased (with permission from Birdlife International) from a new paper by Richard Cuthbert, Peter Ryan, John Cooper and Geoff Hilton entitled 'Demography and population trends of the Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross' in the latest (August 2003) issue of the journal The Condor 105(3), 439-452. There's an online abstract on this if you go to www.cooper.org and click on 'Contents', then to the Aug 2003 issue.

Threat to the Yellow-nosed Albatross

This study found that from year to year the survival of the Atlantic yellow-nosed on Tristan is negatively correlated with longline fishing effort in the South Atlantic, strong evidence that longline fishing is the chief threat.The only estimates of longline mortality of this species come from the Brazilian fleet where in 2001 Fabio Olmos and his colleagues calculated that on average 568 birds were killed annually by the demersal (ie seabed) longline fisheries and 329 from the pelagic (ie. mid-water) fisheries, in total about 900 birds per year.

Others are killed by other South American fleets and seabird by-catch rates off Brazil and Uruguay are high in comparison with those reported from other southern hemisphere fisheries. National and licensed foreign longline fishing fleets operating off southern Africa also kill Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatrosses and along with the South American fleets the by-catch rates of seabirds in this area are very high, especially for Japanese vessels. The South American and South African fleets are responsible for only a small proportion of the total longline fishing effort in the South Atlantic, with most of the fishing undertaken by Japan and Taiwan.

Consequently, Atlantic yellow-nosed mortality is likely to be far higher than the available estimates. Additional to the general problem of by-catch, the sex ratio of Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses killed is strongly biased towards females which implies a more serious impact on the population's capacity to breed and grow than if both sexes were killed in equal proportions.

Get Involved!

This page will be an active ongoing live resource for all info on the h2g2 site concerning the yellow-nosed albatross. Each leg of John Ridgway's Save The Albatross voyage is named after a particular type of albatross and leg 2, which he's currently on, is named after the yellow-nosed albatross. If you know anything at all about yellow-nosed albatross and you'd like to share the information with us, or if you have any questions to ask, please start a conversation below.

Useful Links

• The Global Seabird Conservation Programme
  - A seabird database created by Deon Nel and Frances Taylor

Sign The Petition!

• Click Here To Sign The Petition To Save The Albatross.

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