MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Fisheries failing to safeguard seabirds

Birdlife International has recently published a report ranking organisations on their environmental performance.

UK as a member of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission has scored as one of the worst three performing Regional Fisheries Management Organisations, which are failing to prevent the slaughter of the world's albatrosses in longline fisheries.

Birdlife International claims that RFMO's are doing little or nothing to reduce by-catch of seabirds, sharks and turtles in their fisheries, while at the same time many of their fish stocks have declined by more than ninety percent.

They say that RFMO's have a legal and moral obligation to force the fisheries they govern to reduce the wildlife toll, but International Marine Policy Officer Cleo Small says that they are only as strong as the political will of the countries making them up.

The results of the review will be presented to delegates at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's five day meeting which started in Rome yesterday. Since 1996, the annual seabird mortality rate has dropped from six and a half thousand deaths in 1997 to just fifteen in 2003.(FIBS)