192 | Chapter 10
published by the German company, Springer. Herein French researchers
reported monitoring the Yellow- nosed Albatross colony on Amsterdam
Island in the southern Indian Ocean. Their paper continues the story^16
“On December 29, 2011... we observed an adult bird sitting on an empty
nest, fitted with a curious leg band. The bird was captured and the band
removed. The bird leg did not seem harmed by the ring, and the bird
was apparently in good general condition. The band consisted of tightly
sealed, soft- plastic tube, closed around the albatross leg with a clip
of stainless metal. The waterproof, hollow translucid part contained a
rolled paper, which we extracted. The paper was dry and in good condi-
tion, and had the following manuscript inscriptions: HASLINDO. 08
JAKARTA/15 – JULI – 2011: F.G./ABDULLAH LUTHER.”
It transpired that the Haslindo 8 was a long liner registered in Jakarta,
Indonesia, and properly authorised to fish in the Indian Ocean. Presum-
ably fisherman Abdullah Luther had caught the bird, either deliberately
or accidentally, and decided it would be fun to release the bird with a
message on its leg. And the message is now being repeated by a British
author in a book from an American publisher. The multinational nature
of this simple story spotlights the international, and therefore formida-
ble, complexities of regulating high sea fisheries.
The intercourse between seabirds and fishing is global. Wherever
fishing happens, it is likely to entail some interaction with seabirds and
this overlap is only exacerbated because both parties, fishers and birds,
are frequently driven to concentrate their efforts in the most productive
seas. Where birds are using less productive seas, the likelihood of inter-
actions with fisheries is lower, simply because it is not economically
viable for fishers to target very scattered low density species.
It is easy to offer examples of the overlap of fishers and birds in the
most productive seas. Non- breeding Black- browed Albatrosses from
South Georgia and White- capped Albatrosses from New Zealand share
the Benguela Current off Angola, Namibia and South Africa with a host
of other seabirds, with Cape Fur Seals, and with fishers targeting anchovy
and larger fish. In the North Pacific, satellite- tracked Short- tailed Alba-
trosses venture into the same regions of the Bering Sea as support the
multi- million tonne fishery for Alaskan or Walleye Pollock which are pro-
cessed, inter alia, into the filling of McDonald’s Filet- O- Fish sandwiches.