the clash | 191This is clearly not adequate to prevent White- chinned Petrels retriev-
ing the bait, and potentially making it accessible to other non- diving
species.
Slower steaming speeds during setting, more heavily weighted lines,
and underwater setting tubes would all alleviate the danger. So would
the use of hook pods. These devices, currently in development, enclose
the fishing gear until it has sunk to a predetermined depth, at which
point the pod opens, releasing the hook to begin fishing.
In general, long lining vessels are less attractive to seabirds than trawl-
ers; the pickings are slimmer. That means long liners pose more of a risk
when trawlers are not discarding offal or unwanted fish or indeed when
they are not working at all. One study found the Scopoli’s Shearwater
casualties behind a longline vessel working in the Mediterranean were
concentrated at the weekend when trawlers were in port, and scarce
over the weekdays when trawlers were fishing.
With good will on the part of fishers, sound well- researched sugges-
tions from the conservation community, and sensible accommodation
between both sides, I am hopeful that traumatic deaths of seabirds, re-
sulting from interactions with fishing operations, can indeed be reduced
to very low levels. It is more difficult to be equally sanguine about a
fundamental conflict. Fishers and seabirds are taking very roughly the
same quantity of food out of the sea each year (Chapter 1), and both
parties are likely to concentrate their activities in the most productive
sea areas. While it is obviously too simple to say that one fish removed
by a bird is one less fish to be landed to feed a hungry human family, and
vice versa, the potential for conflict between the two parties is obvious.
***
How might the conundrum of the inevitable competition of people and
birds for the ocean’s finite harvest be resolved? While national measures
are potentially useful, the majority of the world’s seas are beyond na-
tional jurisdiction and, as we have seen, seabird journeys are frequently
made across the unregulated vastness of the high seas.
The international nature of the high seas and the global web entwining
birds and fishers was recently emphasized in the journal Polar Biology,