Saving Planet Earth: Carol Thatcher Saving Albatross

27 June, 2007 by The_Boss

Thursday 28th June 2007 at 7pm on BBC One

Carol Thatcher: Saving Albatross

Carol Thatcher revisits her family history and travels to the Falklands to the scene of a new battle – to save the black browed albatross.

The albatross is the world's biggest flying bird and, with no natural predators, they have lived undisturbed for thousands of years, masters of their harsh environment. Now they face a new danger – long line fishing.

Long line fishing uses baited hooks which can attract diving albatross, as well as fish. When this happens the birds are dragged under water and drowned. The solution is to encourage fishermen to fish using albatross-friendly methods.

On her journey, Carol visits Steeple Jason in the Falkland Islands to see the wonder of the albatross first-hand. After a disappointing arrival without any birds in sight, she is taken aback when she gets to see a nesting colony:

"I've already found along here my image of the trip," says Carol. "What an incredible sight, thousands and thousands of nesting albatrosses. This is a feast for the eyes for any ornithologist. And I'm not one, but I'm pretty captivated myself."

Despite the number of nesting albatrosses which Carol witnesses, the population on Steeple Jason has been in steep decline with over 20 per cent of the population being lost in the past 20 years.

Across the world, an albatross is lost every five minutes due to long line fishing. It is thought that 100,000 birds drown each year, which is a huge loss for this unusual species to recover from.

The problem is compounded by the fact that albatrosses mate for life and only produce one egg a year.

Ali Liddell, education officer for Falkland Islands Conservation, explains: "The birds only lay one egg a year. If you lose one adult bird at sea then that egg will fail, and the partner that's left will take another three or four years to find another mate and start the process again. So the loss of one bird can have a knock-on effect for a number of years."

Matching the albatross flight path, Carol travels from the Falklands to the south coast of Brazil – an incredible journey of 600 miles which the birds fly in search of food.

Here, she sees the work of Tatiana Neves of the RSPB Albatross Task Force. Tatiana and her albatross taskforce are helping to change the attitudes of some of the toughest fisherman – with great results.

Simple tricks, such as dyeing bait blue so that the birds can't see it from the air and using colourful "scarecrow" lines attached to the boat to keep the albatrosses away, can drastically reduce the numbers killed.

A skipper on one of the fishing boats tells how, before trying these measures, up to 40 birds would be killed on one trip, where as now, there's only one bird caught every three or four trips – a dramatic reduction.

But, with only seven taskforce officers to police the whole of the southern ocean, many boats are still to learn about these methods.

Seeing a haul of albatrosses from one of those boats, Carol says: "Well, this really is a very sad haul. Obviously, they tried to take the bait off another ship which wasn't using the mitigation methods used on here, which is really why Tatiana's campaign has to have more money to spread the message to educate fisherman.

"It's no good them catching albatross – it's no money. They want their bait to stay on their hooks to catch more fish. And the measures are cheap, easy to use; they're practical, but, most of all, they're effective."

A £10 donation to the BBC Wildlife Fund could help the RSPB Albatross Task Force Project pay for the weights that help the fishing hooks sink faster, before albatross can get to the bait.