Tracking Ocean Wanders (PDF, 5 MB) - BirdLife International

6.2.2 Interactions with fisheries and fishery
management organisations
The great potential to match data on the distribution (and
abundance) of albatrosses and petrels with data on fishing
effort, particularly for longline fisheries, is evident and has
been stressed in several publications seeking to address the
potential impact of longline fisheries on albatrosses (see
Section 5.2). Several examples of overlap between albatross
distribution (both breeding and on migration) and fishing
effort are provided in Section 5.2 to illustrate the
considerable importance of such approaches.
However, as noted, for many purposes the difficulties in
obtaining data for appropriate scales and times, even for the
better documented fisheries, may constrain what can be
achieved, especially in terms of analysis seeking to estimate
bycatch rates and/or their impact on source populations of
albatrosses.
Nevertheless, combining fishing effort and albatross
distribution data may provide the only effective way to
address these issues. The data are certainly adequate to
provide broad characterisation of the location (and
timing) of potential interactions between albatross
species and different longline fisheries; this is a high
priority task.
The albatross distribution data are, despite the gaps and
deficiencies in terms of providing a consistent global
overview, very useful for enabling a preliminary
identification of the responsibilities of Regional Fisheries
Management Organisations (RFMOs) for environmentally
sensitive management of albatrosses and their habitat based
on overlap of ranges and jurisdictions.
For the Southern Hemisphere this provides very clear
indications of the critical role of, in preliminary priority
order, CCSBT, WCPFC, IOTC, ICCAT and CCAMLR (see
Table 5.3).
These results offer considerable opportunity as a factual
basis for approaching particular RFMOs in respect of their
obligations to address issues of seabird bycatch, especially
of albatrosses and petrels.
Combined with data on overlap with fishing operations,
they also provide scope to identify the times, places and
fisheries where adverse interactions are most likely and,
thereby, allow the identification of mitigation measures
appropriate to the circumstances.
6.2.3 Establish and maintain a Geographical
Information System (GIS) database as an
international conservation tool
Participants agreed to maintain the tracking database,
assembled for the purposes of this workshop, beyond the
meeting and production of its report.
They agreed that the database should be reconstituted
by re-submission of data once an appropriate policy on
data access and use, safeguarding a proprietary rights of
individuals and organisations (whether as dataholders, data
providers or data owners), had been agreed.
Both the policy and practice for data access and use (based
on principles developed for the Census of Marine Life
Ocean Biogeographic Information Service (OBIS) –
SEAMAP Programme) was developed during the workshop
(see Section 5.3).
On the assumption that the GIS database used during
the workshop would be required to be maintained for future
use, BirdLife International offered, at least as an interim
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Tracking ocean wanderers: the global distribution of albatrosses and petrels – Conclusions and future work
measure, to house and manage the database at its
Secretariat headquarters in Cambridge, UK.
This offer was appreciated and accepted in principle.
However it was recognised that:
a) this entailed considerable work, simply to maintain the
database;
b) if/when the database was augmented with new data and
used as a collaborative tool, this would create
considerable additional work in respect of managing
data, data access and data use;
c) there would be increasing needs to link the albatross and
petrel and tracking data to other, analogous, data sets
and to the latest information on the physical and
biological marine environment. It would likely require
very rapid and effective links with other international
databases. This may be facilitated by linking, or possibly
migrating, the Procellariiform Tracking Database from
BirdLife to an organisation or institution specialising in
the management and analysis of data on marine systems
and biogeography.
6.3 FUTURE WORK
6.3.1 Database enhancement
Supplementary data needs
The ability to generate realistic habitat use maps for albatrosses
and petrels still requires substantial amounts of data.
1. At the species level, no data were submitted for Waved
Albatross, Salvin’s Albatross and Atlantic Yellow-nosed
Albatross. However published breeding season data are
available for the first two of these (Anderson et al. 1998,
Fernández et al. 2001). Tracking work is in progress for
Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross.
Incorporating range data for Campbell Albatross
(see Annex 10 – Errata) would emphasise the
importance of the area of the Campbell Plateau south
of New Zealand. The inclusion of data for Waved
Figure 6.1. Range of Waved Albatrosses tracked from Islas
Galápagos (Fernández et al. 2001).