Archived News

{mosimage}

The BirdLife Albatross Task Force (ATF) met over 19-23 January 2009 in Coquimbo, Chile to hold its first workshop.  Delegates from the seven Task Force countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador (under establishment), Namibia, South Africa and Uruguay) attended the meeting.

A significant part of the week’s programme was devoted to a day carrying out demonstrations and research on three pelagic longline vessels from the fishing port of Coquimbo, with the support of Ed Melvin, Washington Sea Grant and Graham Robertson, Australian Antarctic Division.  The workshop agreed that the Task Force’s remit will increasingly include an emphasis on at-sea research to develop mitigation measures.  To this effect members of the six established national task forces signed the “Coquimbo Declaration” at the workshop, committing themselves to undertake experimental mitigation research projects aimed at reducing seabird mortality in both longline and trawl fisheries during the course of 2009.

It is intended that the results of these at-sea experiments will be presented in a series of papers at next year’s Fifth Meeting of the ACAP Advisory Committee, currently planned to be held in Argentina.  A link to ACAP at the ATF workshop was the presence of the Chair of the ACAP Advisory Committee, Dr Marco Favero of Argentina.

For more news of the Coquimbo Workshop go to:

http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2009/02/ATF_chile.html

 and

http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-209321

A report of the workshop is due in February.

News from Ben Sullivan, BirdLife Global Seabird Programme Coordinator and John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer; posted 29 January 2009, updated 4 February 2009

{mosimage}