Fisherman wins prize for slick way to save big birds

By ANNE BESTON

A Northland fisherman has won a $34,000 prize in an international bird-conservation competition by figuring out a novel way to keep seabirds away from bait.

Conservationists and fishers have wrestled with the problem of seabird bycatch for at least a decade as seabird populations decline due to longline fishing.

The birds, including albatross, shearwaters and petrels, dive for baited hooks and drown.

Conservationists believe populations of 22 species of seabirds are declining, including 17 of the 21 species of albatross.

But Alex Aitken, a fisherman for 24 years based at Leigh, has discovered a simple, cheap and effective solution to the problem.

On average, he caught around 100 petrels and shearwaters a year in the Hauraki Gulf until he noticed the birds were reluctant to land anywhere near oily film on water.

"They avoid it like the plague; somehow they know the smell of it," he said.

He set about finding a cheap, reliable source of environmentally friendly oil and one was readily to hand - rotten fish.

Using tails and heads from fish for export or other fish that would have been dumped back over the side, he mixed up a potent brew of rotten, smelly fish and left it in the sun for about a week.

Left to drip from a bottle over the stern, the smelly mixture creates an oil slick on the surface of the sea long enough to allow baited hooks to sink beyond the reach of diving seabirds.

Mr Aitken said he had reduced his seabird bycatch to about five birds a year.

"Seabird bycatch is everyone's problem, this is our world and if we don't look after it, who will?" he said.

The prize was awarded by the Sociedad Espanola de Ornitologia, the Spanish arm of the worldwide bird conservation organisation Birdlife International.

Mr Aitken won over a number of weirdly inventive ideas from Australia, Alaska, Hawaii, Chile, Portugal, Canada and Ireland.

One entry suggested a seaman on a surfboard could be towed behind the fishing boat; another was that the birds could be buzzed with remote-controlled model aeroplanes.