Category: Environment

I was looking back through a piece that I originally posted on another site on July 17, 2010,

I have updated it at the end. It makes grim reading.

In 1991 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Oganization adopted a plan of action for the worldwide reduction of incidental catches of seabirds in driftnets, longlines and gillnets used by fishing vessels.

Terminology
A longline is a baited fishing line anything up to 75 miles (120km) in length that is let out into the water behind a fishing vessel.

A gillnet is a net hung vertically in the water behind a fishing vessel and kept vertical by floats at the top and weights at the bottom.

A driftnet is a string of gillnets tied end to end. They may be many miles long and instead of being anchored at the far end as gillnets are, they are allowed to drift with the current.

How They Kill Birds
Birds are attracted by the offal that the fishing vessels dump, and the birds will follow the vessels and congregate precisely because they know there are likely to be easy pickings.

Once there, the birds are lured by the bait on the hooks on the longlines and they crash into the gillnets as they dive and chase fish underwater.

For some birds, the easy pickings are fatal.

Estimated Two Million Seabirds Killed
The Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds and Birdlife International estimate that in the last ten years two million seabirds have died by being hooked on longlines or trapped in gillnets in European waters.

The record for the south Atlantic and the Pacific is better.

It is the European fishing areas that are failing to fish so as to minimise bycatch, as catching birds incidentally is called.

Driftnets
Driftnets of any length have been banned in certain waters worldwide since 1991 because of their impact on species such as dolphin, turtles, swordfish, and tuna.

Driftnets over one-and-a-half miles (2.5km) in length have been banned in European Union Waters since 1991 and completely banned in the Baltic Sea since 2008. This is all aimed at reducing incidental catches of creatures that inhabit the sea, but it does not address what is happening to seabirds that are caught in longlines and gillnets.

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) says that the data is patchy but what is available indicates that it is albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels, fulmars, gannets, gulls, cormorants, shags, auks, divers, and grebes that are being killed by being hooked on longlines and caught in the nets of gillnets.

These birds are long-lived species and so their populations are sensitive to changes in the survival rates of adult birds.

Many of these seabirds are on the endangered species list. When they are caught on longlines and gillnets far out to sea – where their deaths are not recorded – it confounds efforts to monitor them and to protect them. 

European Union Action
This year the European Union has issued a consultation paper that has been open for contributions since June 11th. The window within which to make contributions closes on August 9th.

Pending the formulation of the European Union Action plan, here is a precis of the recommendations of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) for fishing methods which reduce the numbers of birds caught as bycatch. The recommendations are described as combining “a set of very simple techniques which do not restrict fisheries and do not require any expensive equipment.”

Set hooklines with weights so they sink beyond the reach of seabirds as soon as they are put in the water.

Set longlines at night with only the minimum ship’s lights showing.

Don’t dump offal while longlines are being set.

Remove fish hooks from offal and fish heads before dumping them.

Run a brightly-colored streamer line above the water to scare away birds from the fishing line.

You Can Add Your Voice
The European Fisheries Commission action plan initiative states:

The European Commission intends to develop an EU Action Plan to reduce incidental catches of seabirds in fishing gears. The proposed initiative aims to reduce such catches, namely in longlines and gillnets, by reducing as much as possible the interaction between seabirds and fishing gear.

To this end, the Commission invites all stakeholders and general public to express their views on the questions identified in the consultation paper, as well as to present their opinions regarding further actions that could be introduced in a future Commission proposal for an EU-Plan of Action on Seabirds

If you wish to add your contribution, perhaps by suggesting that the recommendations of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) be implemented straight away, you can do so by clicking on the link in the consultation paper under the section headed ‘How to submit your contribution.’

Update 2024

With all that consultation I thought the situation would be improved. But in a 2022 report Birdlife said that

In Europe, the picture is particularly grim – far worse than is often appreciated. An estimated 200,000 seabirds are killed by bycatch every year. That’s 23 every hour. More than one every three minutes. That means that every time you brush your teeth, by the time you’re done, bycatch has killed yet another seabird.

As shocking as this figure may be, it doesn’t even tell the whole story. It mainly covers two types of fishing gear, longlines and gillnets, as there is a lack of information on bycatch from other types of fishing equipment.

Doesn’t it make you want to spit.

Porbeagle Shark – Illustration by Frank Edward Clarke 1877

The theme of World Animal Day in 2022 was ‘a shared planet’. For 2023 the theme is ‘Great or Small, Love Them All’

Well, some animals are downright dangerous to humans, even if they themselves are unaware of how dangerous they are – rats and fleas that carry diseases, for example.

So love them at a distance and make sure they don’t invade our lives. That’s becoming more difficult to do as humans invade more habitats and climate change alters the distribution of, for example, the mosquito that spreads Dengue fever and the ticks the spread Lyme disease.

But for those animals that attack or defend themselves knowing that they are doing so, let’s talk about sharks.

Talking About Sharks

There are more than 500 known species – from ones that are15cm (6 inches) long, to ones that are over 12m (40 feet) long.

They’ been around for 400 million years, compared to the 200 million years since dinosaurs first arrived.

Some Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) living today are thought to be between 270 and 520 years old. That would mean some of them were alive in the 1500s.

And if that doesn’t float your boat – consider the depths at which they are found. The Frilled shark is home at around 1200 metres deep. The Goblin shark at 1300 metres; the Sixgill shark at 1750 metres deep; the Greenland shark at 2150 metres; the Cookiecutter shark at over 3500 metres; And now we are getting way beyond the depth at which light can penetrate. It is cold down there. But the Megamouth shark is found at over 4500 metres.

What else? Sharks don’t have a bony skeleton. They have a cartilaginous skeleton, which makes them lighter, more bendy, and therefore more agile.

They continuously lose and replace their several rows of teeth,

Some species can smell a drop of blood in the water from several miles away.

They have a senses called the ampullae of Lorenzini, with which they can detect the weak electrical fields in the muscles and nerves of their prey.

All of that sounds like they are the perfect killing machine for killing humans, except that shark attacks on humans are extremely rare.

Sharks do not actively seek out humans as prey; humans are not a primary food source.

Most sharks’ diets consist of fish, seals, sea lions, marine mammals, or smaller marine creatures.

And as apex predators they are hugely important in maintaining the health and balance of ocean ecosystems.

So given that humans behave as though they can do pretty much what they want with the planet, even if there are consequences down the line – you can probably guess how humans treat sharks. But do you know about shark finning?

Shark Finning

Shark finning means catching a shark, cutting off its fins and dumping the still-living shark back into the ocean, where without their fins, they are unable to swim and they die.

It is difficult to be sure of the exact number of sharks that have their fins cut of because it is often done illegally and goes unreported.

However, estimates suggest that tens of millions of sharks are killed each year for their fins.

This is pushing some shark species to extinction.

Shark Fin Soup

Shark finning is driven by the demand for shark fin soup – mostly in Asian countries.

So great or small, love them all – or at least don’t cut their bloody fins off and dump the animals back in the water.

And all just to make shark’s fin soup, which is by all accounts tasteless – as Gordon Ramsey describes.

Google ‘Gordon Ramsey’ and ‘shark finning’ and watch his YouTube videos on the dangers of tracking shark finning gangs, and what the tasteless soup tastes like.

Sharks In UK Waters

Before I looked up which sharks visit UK waters, I would have guessed Britain sees maybe two or three species. In fact it’s a lot more as you can see from this list.

And in case you thought like I did that only smaller sharks come to UK waters, the Basking shark, the first on the list can be ten metres (thirty-three feet) long, .

Basking shark
Shortfin mako shark
Blue shark
Porbeagle
Spiny dogfish
Spurdogs
School shark
Speckled smooth-hound
Greenland shark
Thresher sharks
Smooth hammerhead
Squatina squatina
Oceanic whitetip shark
Bramble shark
Common thresher
Angular roughshark
Kitefin shark
Small-spotted catshark
Nursehound
Leafscale gulper shark
Blacktip shark
Portuguese dogfish
Knifetooth dogfish
Blackmouth catshark
Mouse catshark
Birdbeak dogfish
Black dogfish
Longnose velvet dogfish
Smalltooth sand tiger
Starry smooth-hound
Sharpnose sevengill shark
Common smooth-hound
Bigeye thresher
Copper shark
Longfin mako shark
Dusky shark
Silky shark

The Council in Cambridge made a new cycle path that runs for miles around and into Cambridge, and they lined the path with saplings.

In parts, the saplings are planted three or four deep and close to one another. What you can see are the plastic sleeves that allow the saplings to grow without being browsed by Muntjac deer – which are the most likely browsers to eat them.

But why are the young trees planted so close to one another? It occurred to me that maybe the Council will thin them out when they have seen which do best and which can be sacrificed, but equally all the saplings could suffer from being planted so close in the first place.

If the intention is to thin them out, then what happens when the ‘duds’ are removed? Is that not going to disturb the root system of those being left?

Metafilter Answers

This is what I wondered, and I asked for answers on Metafilter. If you haven’t seen. heard, or used the site, let me recommend it to you. I asked the question today about why these trees are planted so close to one another? Here are two of the replies I received.

Answers

ONE
This is how they do buffer restoration and protection plantings near streams, etc. where I live as well. Where we are they expect about a third of the plants will be lost in one way or another. If they expect that sort of loss where that planting is then maybe that’s appropriate spacing to start and the plants will sort of thin themselves. Also are they all tree saplings? That may be appropriate spacing for shrubs or smaller plants after the “self thinning.”

If plants die or don’t grow in the first year or two they may not actually remove the plants if they aren’t diseased. Presumably they’ll remove the sleeves.

TWO
Close planting is to encourage vertical growth as everyone struggles for the light. That means straighter trunks with fewer kinky side-branches. Also, as alluded above, because nobody knows at the beginning which whips will survive. 

As for damage to the root-system of neighbours when the trees are thinned / die: the thinned saplings are cut close to the ground rather than uprooted, so the ground is undisturbed . . . and the vital underworld fungal network just diverts itself.