Pirates Hunted To Halt Seabird Slaughter

Pirate fishermen are the people sailor John Ridgway is most hoping to
find, name and shame when he sets sail this Saturday to highlight the
plight of albatrosses.

Ridgway is leaving Cape Town for Melbourne to follow the route of the
wandering albatross, one of the 17 southern hemisphere albatross
species threatened with extinction, largely because of illegal
longline fishing.

The 65-year-old former paratrooper is determined to publicise the
effect that this outlawed fishing is having on albatrosses and other
species. More than 300,000 seabirds, including 100,000 albatrosses are
lured onto baited hooks every year, either drowning or dying of their
injuries.

Ridgway said:

There is no good, economic reason why pirate longline
fishing should be allowed to continue. This slaughter of seabirds is
senseless yet could lead to the loss of one of the world's most
mysterious and charismatic birds.

There are already simple measures fishermen should be taking which
significantly reduce seabird deaths without affecting their boat's
catch and it astonishes me that governments have been so slow in even
attempting to enforce these regulations.

Ridgway set off with his wife Marie Christine and a small crew from
Ardmore, north-west Scotland on July 27 to report on and film illegal
longline fishermen hunting the increasingly rare bluefin tuna and
Patagonian toothfish.

The seven legs of his trip, in his yacht English Rose VI, will each
highlight a different albatross species with his route, after
Melbourne, taking him to Wellington, the Falklands, South Georgia,
Gough Island and back to London via Cape Town. The Cape Town to
Melbourne leg will call attention to the wandering albatross.

Ridgway's departure will be followed two days later by the annual
meeting in Hobart of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic
Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), in which efforts to curb pirate
fishing will be high on the agenda.

Euan Dunn, senior marine policy officer at the RSPB, BirdLife
International's UK partner said:

Albatrosses are now gravely
threatened by indiscriminate longline fishing. Some species could be
extinct within 20 years unless we stop the slaughter. The challenge
is to get uniform adoption and enforcement, around the world, of tough
rules for stamping out the organised crime of pirate fishing.

John Ridgway and Forest & Bird, BirdLife's partner in New Zealand,
have set up a worldwide online petition urging fishing nations to
stamp out pirate longline fishing. Ridgway is planning to submit the
final petition to a meeting on pirate fisheries at the UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation in Rome, in June next year.

Sign The Petition!

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

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