Albatrosses spying on illegal fishers

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Albatrosses have been used to successfully find illegal fishing vessels by tracking their radar signals and reporting their position in realtime.

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020 ... 1915499117

Here, we demonstrate that animal-borne, satellite-relayed data loggers both detected and localized fishing vessels over large oceanic sectors. Attraction of albatrosses to fishing vessels differed according to species and age. We found high proportions of nondeclared fishing vessels operating in international waters, as well as in some remote national seas. Our results demonstrate the potential of using animals as Ocean Sentinels for operational conservation.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Interview on RNZ: https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018732157

[Jos1]

This is potentially not good news - if illegal operators understand that albatrosses can be used to track their position, I would imagine some illegal operators would routinely kill albatrosses to try to avoid detection.

Same is happening with vultures in Botswana - elephant poachers have started mass poisoning vultures because they reveal poached carcases.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Noted in the interview is that the tags are discrete and fishers would have a hard time targeting individual birds among hundreds or thousands of others on rough seas. Indiscriminatly targeting birds would have very low chance of getting a tagged bird.

[Jos1]

Hopefully, but I still would have doubts as to the wisdom of this if it became common knowledge among the illegal operators that albatrosses were being used to spy on them. Poachers in Botswana haven't tried to target individual birds, they are trying to wipe them out on mass. Maybe illegal fishing operators are more ethical?

[Clinton9]

They will shoot the albatrosses, with guns, cause numbers of albatrosses to drop.

In Africa, the flying vultures were shot by poachers because the vultures alerted guards to dead elephants & rhinos.
Guards have to check for vultures in sky, if vultures drop, guards will look for dead animals.

This is potentially not good news - if illegal operators understand that albatrosses can be used to track their position, I would imagine some illegal operators would routinely kill albatrosses to try to avoid detection.

Same is happening with vultures in Botswana - elephant poachers have started mass poisoning vultures because they reveal poached carcases.

[Jim_j]

I tend to agree with the concerns - sounds a good idea in theory - but I can see illegal fishers arming themselves with shotguns etc and just blasting everything thet see out of the sky.
Cheers Jim

[Michael Szabo]

Given the flagrant disregard for the law that the owners and 'captains' of illegal fishing vessels clearly have, it seems likely that at least some of them could resort to the mass shooting of albatrosses at sea just as some illegal poachers have resorted to mass poisoning vultures in Botswana:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/worl ... hants.html

[Jan]

That's why there should be cameras on all fishing boats. It isn't acceptable that only the boats with observers report bird casulties, as seems to be the case, reported recently.

[Parula]

I was horrified to read this report. Before I had finished reading it was apparent, at least to me, that illegal fisherman will use any method at their disposal to avoid detection (ie killing all albatrosses they encounter) This research is crass and inept with clearly NO thought given to the consequences of publishing. I hope I am wrong but I fear that permanent damage to albatross populations will have already been produced by this thoughtless publication.