Sir David Attenborough backs the Hookpod to save albatrosses and turtles

摘要

By far the biggest threat faced by many albatrosses, other seabirds and marine turtles is death on longline fishing hooks. A single vessel may use a line extending up to 10 km, from which hangs many thousands of baited hooks. Every year pelagic longliners fishing for tuna and swordfish set about three billion hooks, killing an estimated 300,000 seabirds, of which many thousands are albatrosses. Many of the world's 21 species of albatrosses are threatened with extinction and, somewhere in the world, an albatross dies on a fishing hook every five minutes. A recent study in the USA found that 250,000 Loggerhead Caretta caretta and 60,000 Leatherback Turtles Dermochelys coriacea are estimated to be inadvertently snared each year by commercial longline vessels. It is abundantly clear that global action is necessary to tackle the damage caused by longline fishing.