Mike’s post in the “Latest News” section on the homepage (which basically was about the drowning of 36 albatrosses on the hooks of a single long-line fishing vessel) reminded me of a post I wrote on my old blog last May that made a connection between tuna sandwiches and the severe collapse in the world’s albatross populations. I’d like to reproduce that post here on 10,000 Birds. The post originally sent a small amount of flak hissing my way so I added a follow-up, which I’ve also included. I’d be very interested to see how the readers of 10,000 Birds - who like everyone else have been saturated in green issues over the last eighteen months - view my thoughts today (so, please, sharpen up those cyber pencils and get writing)…

BirdLife/RSPB Save the Albatross Campaign

When I was a twitcher - ooh, many, many years ago - my brother Nial and I hitch-hiked all the way up to the Shetland Islands to see “Albert Ross”, a Black-browed Albatross Diomedea melanophris that had already spent years sitting forlornly on a rock in a Northern Gannet Sula bassana colony off Hermaness hoping to persuade one of the females that he was nothing more than a very large gannet and well worth a bit of - you know, attention of a loving sort…

A little daft-looking sat on a rock, Albert was transformed into one of the most spectacular birds in the world when he unfolded his nearly nine-foot foot wingspan and dropped into the swirling currents of air racing around the cliffs of the colony. Nial and I waited hours for him to fly, and when he did we were hooked on seabirds for life. He was just so beautiful, so perfectly made for skimming the oceans, eating up mile after a mile with barely a twitch of his wings. He was a much-loved, very rare visitor to the UK and he was last seen in 1996.

Black-browed Albatross Diomedea melanophris. Photo © savethealbatross.net

The speculation at the time was that “Albert” had possibly died of old age. He’d been coming to Scotland since 1972 (we saw him in 1984), and given that albatrosses remain at sea for the first five years of their lives he was at least thirty. Possibly he did die of old age - but the chances are even higher that poor old “Albert” made the fatal mistake of looking for fish in the same oceans as the world’s long-liners and ended his care-free days being dragged beneath the sea with a hook jammed deep in his throat.

After all, 100,000 albatrosses (yes, 100,000) die every year this way - so why not “Albert”?

That’s an amazing fact isn’t it? 100,000 albatrosses dying every year so that - basically - our supermarket shelves can be stocked with tins of tuna and the world’s restaurants can serve up exotic fish from the southern oceans. That’s ONE EVERY FIVE MINUTES. These are birds that take years to reach sexual maturity, mate for life, and have a low reproductive rate. Little wonder that of the 21 species of albatross 19 ARE NOW THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION. Not in a decade or two, not in the time it will take ‘for someone else to fix the problem’, right now…

I was mailed a few days ago and asked if I’d post some information about the joint RSPB/BirdLife campaign to save the albatross. I knew about the campaign but hadn’t really given it too much thought - I had things to do, like post a few photo-galleries and clean my shoes for my next trip abroad…Once I read the facts about how close these incredible birds are to being wiped out I got so bloody infuriated…19 OF 21 SPECIES THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION. That’s incredible isn’t it?

Maybe “albatrosses” are birds you don’t feel connected to in any way? I’ll bet many of you have eaten tuna sandwiches or have ordered swordfish for dinner…that connects you. I know that some people who read this blog have been out on pelagics and looked for albatrosses or live by the coast in parts of the world that albatrosses fly by…that connects you. Or maybe like me you made that long journey north to visit “Albert Ross” and gasped when he hit the air and with a flick of his wingtips disappeared out to sea…you and me, we’re connected to albatrosses too.

The websites produced by the campaigners are inspiring - if disturbing - so please click on the links below and have a good look at just what’s disappearing right in front of us. Disappearing under the ocean attached to a metal hook and miles of fishing-line…

• www.savethealbatross.net: the homepage of the Save the Albatross campaign.
• The Albatross Task Force.

Follow-up post: All I’m saying is that we have a choice…

Drowned Wandering Albatross. Photo © BirdLife

I had an “interesting” email this morning asking (which is a polite way of putting it) if I really thought that the “solution to saving albatrosses was for a few birders to stop eating tuna sandwiches”.

I was going to ignore it, but I’m up for an argument anytime - so, what the Heck, I’ll post my thoughts online and invite anyone who wants to have a pot-shot at me to go right ahead…

Okay, firstly I should say that as far as I know there is no mention anywhere on the savethealbatross.net website of a boycott of fish products of any sort. The “solution” put forward by BirdLife/RSPB is to educate the long-line fishermen to add streamers to the lines they lay so that seabirds will be scared away. It’s a simple and elegant plan, costs very little to implement, and will hopefully halt (or at least slow) the mass slaughter of albatrosses, shearwaters, and petrels.

Nor is there a mention of organised boycotts in my post. I could’ve suggested a boycott, but I didn’t because I don’t think for one minute that I could influence enough people to make a boycott work. What I did do was to make the connection between the consumer and the deaths of thousands and thousands of albatrosses. The connection is there for all to see: fishermen go fishing because consumers buy fish. HOW they fish is connected too. They fish the way they do because it’s efficient, it’s cheap, and it’s pretty obvious that no matter what carnage they wreak on the marine environment consumers don’t seem interested in either punishing them or pushing to change their behaviour. Every time a sandwich is bought that contains fish caught in this way it’s a tacit gesture of support for long-lining, and by implication another message being sent out that the seabird deaths don’t matter. Every time someone goes into a restaurant and asks for Swordfish it’s the same: the consumer orders off the menu, the restaurant-owner needs more fish, the fishermen go out to get it for them, and more albatrosses die. I don’t see for one second how this isn’t true.

Now, do I really think that if a few birders stop eating tuna sandwiches the 19 species of albatross threatened with extinction will be saved? That’s missing the point entirely. So many of us - birders, non-birders, Joe Schmoe in the street, everyone - says that there’s nothing the individual can do to “save the planet”. No, on our own, unless we happen to be a President or Bill Gates, there’s not a lot we can do. But that shouldn’t mean that we DON’T do what we CAN. Before I went veggie I really liked the taste of Tuna - chopped up into mayo with lemon and black pepper it’s delicious. It’s low-fat and it’s mainly protein too. The fact is though that the way Tuna and Swordfish and a host of other marine animals are caught means that they, along with 19 species of albatross, are being driven towards extinction. My choice then and now is simple enough: do I support the fishing industry by eating their “product”, or do I not. Put another way, the question is: Do I - as an individual consumer - want to financially support an industry that is destructive and wasteful, and that kills thousands of birds? The answer then and now is “No”.

The next question that can fairly be asked is, Do I think that by choosing not to eat fish I will have an impact upon the long-line fishing industry? No, I don’t. The amount I would contribute to the fishing industry by buying a tuna sandwich once a week is - to use a relevant metaphor - ‘a drop in the ocean’. So why bother? Again, that’s not the argument. The real question should be, Who do I want to give my money to? The long-line fishing industry or the organic farmer, for instance? The long-line fishing industry or the fishing co-operative that tries to work “ethically”. The argument is not what effect I as an individual can have, but whether or not I personally want to financially back an industry that is killing thousands of seabirds (and, incidentally, millions of fish) every year so that I get one extra choice for lunch. The answer is, “No, I don’t”.

Of course, it’s an entirely different question if you ask, What if millions of individuals decided not to back the industry either? Then there’d be a huge impact. Is anyone calling for the closure of the industry though? For job losses? Hardship for poverty-stricken people who have “no choice”? Leaving aside the fact that as fishing “stocks” disappear through over-fishing, marine pollution, and rising marine temperatures there’ll be job-losses anyway, as I pointed out, the savethealbatross.net website isn’t pitching for a boycott or an industry shut-down: the campaign wants fishing fleets to change the way they operate, to fish but to not kill albatrosses while they’re doing it: by flying streamers above the long-lines for instance, or by using quickly sinking hooks and hauling them in differently. (Of course, the impact of a boycott would most likely be a change in the way that the industry operates, but that’s another matter - I was asked to flag the campaign as it stands, and that’s why I posted what I did.)

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me that I personally think that not eating fish at all is the best way to protect fish and albatrosses, but I’m not trying to push a vegetarian agenda on people who believe differently, and I can’t imagine BirdLife ever trying to do that either. It’s not realistic (and no large NGO is going to advocate a campaign it would think it had no chance of winning). What I passionately believe is that we all need to be much more aware of where our food comes from and where the money we spend on food actually goes and what it supports. We need to ask too whether in this instance that money could be better used to drive change that (surely?) any birder would like to see - the survival of some of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring birds on the planet.

Like I said at the top of this post,’ All I’m saying is that we have a choice…’