**Abstract:**

Bycatch of seabirds in longline fisheries includes mortalities (during setting) and live captures (mainly during hauling). The proportion of injured live-caught birds that later die is unknown, complicating efforts to quantify impacts of fisheries, particularly as live-capture rates will probably increase with vessels adopting night setting as a mitigation measure. Over a 26-year period at South Georgia, foul-hooking indices - birds with embedded hooks or entangled among 10 000s checked at the colony - were broadly similar in wandering albatrosses and giant petrels, an order of magnitude lower in black-browed albatrosses and nil in grey-headed and light-mantled albatrosses. This likely reflected differing degrees of overlap with fisheries and interaction with gear during hauling. Indices peaked in the early 2000s, then declined, broadly corresponding with changing fishing practices - the lagged effect of a seasonal fisheries-closure, introduction of a new fishing system, reduced effort in some demersal fisheries, general improvements in bycatch mitigation - indicating that foul-hooking indices at colonies can reflect relative risk for different species over time, and be a useful adjunct to vessel-based monitoring of live-capture rates. Taking into account age and status when reported, and annual survival probabilities in the wider population, subsequent survival of live-caught and released wandering albatrosses was around 40% of that expected for the wider population. This has major implications for ecological risk assessments that seek to determine the impacts of fisheries on seabirds, as most do not currently consider deleterious impacts of live capture.

**Authors:**

Richard Phillips¹, Andrew Wood¹

¹British Antarctic Survey

Variation in live-capture rates of albatrosses and petrels in fisheries, post-release survival and implications for monitoring and management

**Session Replay:** [Click here](https://zoom.us/rec/share/LvhoId4USuzDWfn4ktPxSrYyi1sSoqlqYg5a0pBayRDD2jwwrpImrTHApcI4Z9Di.Hmp-Gg8EUoFoJmw-?startTime=1633701943000)<br><br>

<i>**Session Chairs: **Rory Crawford, Stephanie Prince, Pamela Michael, Amanda Gladics, Tom Good</i><br><br>
**Session Description:**<br>Seabird bycatch in fisheries remains the greatest threat to seabirds alongside Invasive Non-Native Species. Solutions are now well-established for trawl and longline fisheries and have been adopted in a number of fisheries to great effect, but broadscale implementation remains a barrier to improving the conservation status of threatened seabirds, perhaps most notably albatrosses. Given the vast at-sea ranges of many seabirds affected by fisheries, these implementation gaps – both in national waters and on the High Seas – need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. As well as shining a light on the success stories (and what has made them successful), this symposium will focus on the outstanding challenges that need to be addressed: from the fundamental basics (how to estimate bycatch levels from often low sampling effort and zero-inflated data) to the balance of ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ in achieving broader uptake, to tackling bycatch in other gear types, particularly gillnets and purse seines.<br>

Symposium 14 - Seabird bycatch in commercial fisheries: Progress and challenges II

symposium

Welcome Seabirders!  

Welcome to Virtual World Seabird Conference 3 - vWSC3! Whether you are in your office or lab, at home, in a coffee shop or bar poaching some wifi, or at a remote field site or research vessel – we are very excited to welcome you to the third ever World Seabird Conference. 

We would like to thank ALL of you for being so patient as WSC3 was scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, revised to virtual, and scheduled again. Throughout all those iterations there was one message that remained perfectly clear – seabirders were eager to meet and share their science. If we could not meet in person then virtual it would have to be, but a 3rd WSC was something everyone wanted. That support and commitment helped the WSU Board of Directors and Member Societies sort through all of the challenges they faced to plan and hold this conference. 

The list of those that need to be thanked is long and, while we plan on recognizing many during the live closing plenary, it is important to do so here in writing as well. 

The Australasian Seabird Group was our Local Host for our plan to meet in Hobart, Tasmania. They invested substantial time and effort to find venues and plan events that we unfortunately were not able to visit. Nonetheless we appreciate their work on behalf of WSC3 and encourage all of you to thank them when you see their members in Gathertown or elsewhere during our virtual meeting. Their willingness to host created the initial excitement for WSC3 and without that our vWSC would not have been possible.

We also wish to thank the Science Program Committee, the Virtual Committee, and the Early Career Scientist Committee for their hard work planning the logistics, events, and schedule for vWSC3. These committees also had to deal with changing parameters and short timelines that made what is always a challenging task even more challenging. The Travel Awards Committee also invested time and effort in developing procedures for awarding travel funds that ultimately would not be implemented. 

Our ability to shift from an in-person to a virtual meeting, and to do so in a way that would be financially feasible, was due to the effective efforts of The International Fundraising Committee and to our financial sponsors. The IFC raised funds to support WSC3 and then, through the good relationships they built with sponsors, ensured we could re-envision how those funds could be used to support a virtual conference that would be affordable and high-quality.

We all owe the WSU Board of Directors and the Representatives of the Member Societies a great deal of thanks. They are the ones who manage the WSU and, for the past 18 months, have had to have a series of challenging meetings and conversations, have had to make a series of difficult choices, have had to do all of that while considering the short- and long-term health of WSU and the World Seabird Conferences, and did this while also managing their own challenges at their day jobs. We are grateful for their diligence, patience, foresight, and throughout all of the meetings, their collegiality. Also – a 6-year term is quite a commitment!

There would not be a WSC3 without a successful WSC1 and WSC2. Thanks go to the Pacific Seabird Group for their support of WSC1 in Victoria, Canada, and to the African Seabird Group for their support of WSC2 in Cape Town, South Africa. In each of these endeavors and for our current conference we were fortunate to work with a dependable and trustworthy partner in Podium Conferences. Michelle Smith and Marischal de Armond have become valued members of our team and have not only helped us plan conferences but have assisted and advised the WSU Chairs and Board on issues above and beyond conference planning. 

As we embark on our vWSC3 week we extend to all of you our thanks for showing up, for being patient, and most importantly for the work you do with seabirds. We are all part of a unique, global community that shares an interest, a fascination, and a passion for birds that make a living in our world’s oceans. We have advanced the science, conservation, and management of seabirds as well the ecosystems they inhabit. We are consistently impressed and motivated by the work you do. 

The WSU formed in 2010 because we saw the need for a global organization to address challenges at a global level. Over the past 11 years WSU has grown, adapted, and evolved to become the community that this week is making vWSC3 a reality. Enjoy the week, appreciate and support the friends and colleagues you have made in the community, and if you see us in a virtual hallway please stop and say hello! 

Thank you for the opportunity to serve all of you and the WSU over the past few years,

Nicholas Carlile, Interim Chair, WSU<br>
Patrick Jodice, 2nd Chair of the WSU<br><br>

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3rd World Seabird Conference

Join us for four days of science, networking and virtual engagement with delegates from around the world!

Richard Phillips

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Variation in live-capture rates of albatrosses and petrels in fisheries, post-release survival and implications for monitoring and management

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