Many of these birds die needlessly by taking baited hooks from longline fishing vessels. With support from AKP and ACAP (Agreement for Conservation for Albatross and Petrel), a company called Fishtek Ltd has developed a reusable device called Hookpod that surrounds baited hooks from the time they are deployed until they sink too deep for albatrosses to reach, when it opens to expose the bait to fish.
AKP invests around $10,000 per year in research into design and development of the Hookpod product.
The device has already proven effective in at-sea trials in saving albatrosses and other large seabirds, with the mutual benefit of protecting the seabirds and increasing the yield and profitability of the legal fishing operation. When the Save the Albatross campaign started, 19 of the 22 albatross species were on the IUCN Red List; that figure has now been reduced to 15.
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