Northamptonshire Bird Club: New Hookpod initiative to reduce albatross and turtle casualties...

Sunday, 29 April 2018

New Hookpod initiative to reduce albatross and turtle casualties...

Message from Becky Ingham from Hookpod...

I am contacting you to seek some support for a project I am involved in to save thousands of albatrosses and turtles from a grisly death on longlines in the rich waters off the Brazilian coast. I’m hoping this may be of interest to the members of the Northamptonshire Bird Club.

We are aiming to completely equip five Brazilian longliners with Hookpods. The Hookpod is an ingenious new British invention, which covers the barb of the hook during setting the lines in longline fishing operations, and thus prevents the accidental capture of seabirds, particularly albatross and also turtles. It then opens when it reaches 20m depth, beyond the diving depth of birds and the feeding depth of most turtles, to release the hook to begin safely fishing. In this way, fishermen catch fish and not birds or turtles. It is re-usable, durable for around 2-3 years and has no impact on either the fishing operation or the catch rate of target fish.

As you will see from the website we have the support of both Sir David Attenborough and Chris Packham in delivering this project and are working closely with partners in Brazil to monitor the results. If we see the expected decline in turtle bycatch, the Hookpod will be the first EVER mitigation device to prevent cross-taxa bycatch in fisheries.

We are seeking support in the form of any level of donation - every £1 will go towards the final total. However, as this is a crowdfunded project we have to reach our target of £57,000 to receive any funds at all! The link to the website is here: https://bit.ly/2JQGmTc

Spreading the word about this project is also part of the help you could provide. Even if a donation is not possible, sharing this email, flier and information with anyone you know who might be interested in supporting this work would be incredibly helpful.

If you have any queries about either the project or the work that Hookpod carry out, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We are confident that getting Hookpods out into longline fisheries will make the difference between survival or extinction for some of our most iconic albatross species and I very much hope that you and the group feel able to support this in some way.

With very best wishes and thanks.

Becky