WITH WINGSPANS ALMOSTthe length of a
car – the largest of any bird – small and inconspicuous
they are not. But albatrosses have been turned into
spies of the high seas to uncover suspicious fishing
vessels.
The concept could, for the first time, reveal the
extent of illegal and undeclared fishing that devastates
ocean ecosystems, while enabling authorities to swoop
in based on intel received from these feathery giants.
To illuminate the shady goings-on in the open
ocean, a team led by Henri Weimerskirch, a marine
ecologist at the French National Centre for Scientific
Research,recruited two endangered albatross species
that sound like codenames already – wandering and
Amsterdam – as covert ocean-going operatives in
Operation Sentinel.
Employing albatrosses as spies isn’t that crazy.
The birds share a common goal with boats: if anything
is going to seek out a fishery’s haul, it’s going to be
an albatross. What’s more, albatrosses spend their
lives covering vast areas of ocean; it’s estimated that
in a 50-year lifetime wandering albatrosses travel
distances equivalent to going to the Moon and back
10 times.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe taping
data-logging devices to the backs of 169 birds nesting
on three islands in the southern Indian Ocean over six
months. The devices are able to detect and locate any
boats emitting radar signals within a 30-kilometre
radius. The birds then took to the skies from their
nesting grounds and surveyed a remote expanse
stretching from South Africa to New Zealand,
between Antarctica and Australia’s southern
coastline.
“This research makes a fantastic contribution
to our understanding of the scale and distribution
of legal fishing and the presence of ‘dark’ fishing
activities, which is fundamental to improve
enforcement,” explains marine ecologist Jessica
Meeuwig, Director of the Marine Futures Lab at
the University of Western Australia. “We know that
distant water fishing fleets are now covering over 90%
of the world’s oceans.”SURVEILLANCE AT SEA