Forest & Bird is devastated by the scale of a recent commercial bycatch event that saw 207 seabirds, in this case adult tītī sooty shearwater, caught by a single trawler near Te Waewae Bay, off the Southland coast, leaving their chicks to starve to death.
The information was recently released by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) in their seabirds and protected marine species bycatch quarterly report (1 Jan 2025 – 31 March 2025).
“This news is shocking and a reminder of the toll our commercial fishing industry continues to take on seabirds,” says Chelsea McGaw, Forest & Bird’s Regional Conservation Manager for Otago and Southland. “While Forest & Bird is working hard on the ground to protect our special seabirds such as tītī, commercial fishers are wrecking havoc at sea.
“Given the timing of the bycatch, it’s highly likely these birds would have been foraging at sea to feed their chicks on land.
“This makes this a double loss – the adult plus the chick which probably starved to death when their parent did not return. It is a sobering thought that catches like this are not illegal, as long as they are reported.”
Forest & Bird is asking MPI for more information on this bycatch event and the actions taken by MPI and commercial trawl fisheries to prevent this happening again.
“We are also calling on MPI to urgently review and strengthen seabird bycatch mitigation in trawl fisheries,” Ms McGaw says. “Unlike in surface longline fisheries, where international best practice (three out of three mitigation measures) is now in place, trawl fisheries still rely on inconsistent voluntary measures,” Ms McGaw says.
“No trawl net should be bringing up over 200 seabirds at once. This is a warning sign – a trawler that can kill this many tītī in one go could easily wipe out other threatened or at-risk seabirds, like the toroa Antipodean albatross. We need mandatory, enforceable rules that include effective bird scaring devices and fish waste management.”
Although tītī are more widespread than many other New Zealand seabirds, they are classified as ‘at-risk/declining’ with only a few small mainland colonies persisting on headlands of Te Wai Pounamu the South Island. Forest & Bird has invested many volunteer hours and conservation dollars protecting these birds in their Ōtepoti Dunedin and Catlins project sites.
Ms McGaw says, “This tītī breeding season alone, 21 volunteers contributed over 430 hours on a range of activities including pest control, track clearing and bird monitoring. At the Sandfly Bay breeding colony, we tagged 72 chicks – that work matters but it’s being undone out at sea.
“Relying on voluntary measures doesn’t work. As this report shows, the scale of bycatch is unacceptable and right now, it’s failing our wildlife.”
Trawl fisheries in New Zealand had 705 ‘interactions’ with non-fish and protected species this last fishing quarter, including various species of seabirds, dolphins, seals and sea lions.