Seabird Bycatch in Pelagic Longline Fisheries Is Grossly Underestimated when Using Only Haul Data

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds are killed each year as bycatch in longline fisheries. Seabirds are predominantly caught during line setting but bycatch is generally recorded during line hauling, many hours after birds are caught. Bird loss during this interval may lead to inaccurate bycatch information. In this 15 year study, seabird bycatch was recorded during both line setting and line hauling from four fishing regions: Indian Ocean, Southern Ocean, Coral Sea and central Pacific Ocean. Over 43,000 albatrosses, petrels and skuas representing over 25 species were counted during line setting of which almost 6,000 seabirds attempted to take the bait. Bait-taking interactions were placed into one of four categories. (i) The majority (57%) of bait-taking attempts were “unsuccessful” involving seabirds that did not take the bait nor get caught or hooked. (ii) One-third of attempts were “successful” with seabirds removing the bait while not getting caught. (iii) One-hundred and seventy-six seabirds (3% of attempts) were observed being “caught” during line setting, with three albatross species – Laysan (Phoebastria immutabilis), black-footed (P. nigripes) and black-browed (Thalassarche melanophrys)– dominating this category. However, of these, only 85 (48%) seabird carcasses were retrieved during line hauling. Most caught seabirds were hooked through the bill. (iv) The remainder of seabird-bait interactions (7%) was not clearly observed, but likely involved more “caught” seabirds. Bait taking attempts and percentage outcome (e.g. successful, caught) varied between seabird species and was not always related to species abundance around fishing vessels. Using only haul data to calculate seabird bycatch grossly underestimates actual bycatch levels, with the level of seabird bycatch from pelagic longline fishing possibly double what was previously thought

Shifting access to pools of shoot water sustains gas exchange and increases stem hydraulic safety during seasonal atmospheric drought

Understanding how plants acclimate to drought is crucial for predicting future vulnerability, yet seasonal acclimation of traits that improve drought tolerance in trees remains poorly resolved. We hypothesized that dry season acclimation of leaf and stem traits influencing shoot water storage and hydraulic capacitance would mitigate the drought-associated risks of reduced gas exchange and hydraulic failure in the mangrove Sonneratia alba. By late dry season, availability of stored water had shifted within leaves and between leaves and stems. While whole shoot capacitance remained stable, the symplastic fraction of leaf water increased 86%, leaf capacitance increased 104% and stem capacitance declined 80%. Despite declining plant water potentials, leaf and whole plant hydraulic conductance remained unchanged, and midday assimilation rates increased. Further, the available leaf water between the minimum water potential observed and that corresponding to 50% loss of stem conductance increased 111%. Shifting availability of pools of water, within and between organs, maintained leaf water available to buffer periods of increased photosynthesis and losses in stem hydraulic conductivity, mitigating risks of carbon depletion and hydraulic failure during atmospheric drought. Seasonal changes in access to tissue and organ water may have an important role in drought acclimation and avoidance.Research was conducted with financial support from Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP180102969 awarded to M.B., L.S. and M.M. CB was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. TIF was supported by the Becas Chile PhD scholarship program granted by ANID. OB was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP170104091. We thank Catherine Bone for outstanding support of field work conducted in mangrove forest along the Daintree River

Foliar water uptake via cork warts in mangroves of the Sonneratia genus

Foliar water uptake (FWU) occurs in plants of diverse ecosystems; however, the diversity of pathways and their associated FWU kinetics remain poorly resolved. We characterized a novel FWU pathway in two mangrove species of the Sonneratia genus, S. alba and S. caseolaris. Further, we assessed the influence of leaf wetting duration, wet-dry seasonality and leaf dehydration on leaf conductance to surface water (Ksurf ). The symplastic tracer dye, disodium fluorescein, revealed living cells subtending and encircling leaf epidermal structures known as cork warts as a pathway of FWU entry into the leaf. Rehydration kinetics experiments revealed a novel mode of FWU, with slow and steady rates of water uptake persistent over a duration of 12 h. Ksurf increased with longer durations of leaf wetting and was greater in leaves with more negative water potentials at the initiation of leaf wetting. Ksurf declined by 68% between wet and dry seasons. Our results suggest that FWU via cork warts in Sonneratia sp. may be rate limited and under active regulation. We conclude that FWU pathways in halophytes may require ion exclusion to avoid uptake of salt when inundated, paralleling the capacity of halophyte roots for ion selectivity during water acquisition. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.The project was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant Projects DP150104437 and DP180102969 awarded to MCB. TIF was supported by the Becas Chile PhD scholarship program granted by ANID. CB, HAB and RJH were supported by Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarships. HIH was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a NSF GROW Fellowship. OB was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP17010409

A review of cetacean interactions with longline gear

Fishery-cetacean interactions, including those with longline gear, give rise to economic, ecological and social concerns. This paper reviews problems resulting from cetacean-longline interactions, considers potential strategies to reduce interactions and identifies research priorities and approaches. Depredation by cetaceans (removal and damage of hooked fish and bait from fishing gear) and damage and loss of fishing gear create economic problems; however, the magnitude of this problem is poorly understood. There is also insufficient information to determine whether there are population-level effects resulting from injury and mortality of cetaceans (from incidental entanglement and hooking and from deliberate actions to discourage depredation). Fishery-cetacean interactions may also: change cetacean foraging behaviour and distribution; increase fishing effort to make up for fish taken from gear by cetaceans; and create errors in fish stock assessments that do not account for cetacean depredation. Negative public perceptions of longline fishing can result from news of incidental and deliberate injury and mortality of cetaceans associated with longlining. Information on how to reduce cetacean interactions with longline gear is also limited, as is the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for them. Strategies already employed in some fleets include refraining from setting or cutting sets short when problematic species of cetaceans are observed and fleet coordination of daily fishing times and positions. Many fishermen perceive depredation as an inevitable part of fishing. This paper discusses a number of other possible cetacean avoidance strategies that warrant consideration, including: (1) fleet communication to enable vessels to avoid temporally and spatially unpredictable and sporadic hotspots of aggregations of cetaceans; (2) underwater acoustic masking devices to conceal the sound of the vessel, gear, and setting and hauling activities; (3) quieter vessels to reduce cetaceans’ ability to target longline vessels; (4) encasement of caught fish to reduce cetacean access to or interest in the catch; (5) use of bait or gear with an unpleasant smell or taste to reduce the attractiveness of gear, bait and catch to cetaceans; (6) use of prerecorded fishing vessel sounds played from stations throughout a fleet’s fishing grounds to distract cetaceans from actual fishing vessels; (7) use of acoustic devices to mask returning cetacean echolocation signals; and (8) use of tethered sonobuoys to track cetaceans and enable fleet avoidance. Vessels with relatively low cetacean interaction rates should be examined for design and operational differences from vessels with high interaction rates, possibly allowing identification of effective avoidance methods. There is a need for experimentation in individual longline fisheries over several seasons to assess fisheryspecific efficacy and commercial viability of cetacean avoidance strategies. This is necessary as different cetacean species likely respond differently to an avoidance method and cetaceans may habituate to an avoidance strategy, especially in fisheries interacting with resident cetaceans

The feeding ecology and field energetics of the Pedra Branca skink (Niveoscincus palfreymani)

Nigel Brothers, Alan Wiltshire, David Pemberton, Nick Mooney and Brian Gree

Morphometric comparison of Australian Shy and New Zealand White-capped Albatrosses

Albatrosses are frequently killed by longline and trawl fishery operations but the relative impact of such activities at the species or population level are largely unknown. Such information requires the widespread presence of fishery observers and an ability to identify accurately the species and provenance of all albatrosses killed by fishing vessels. In this study we investigate the use of morphometric measurements to identify Shy (Thalassarche cauto) from White-capped (T. steadi) Albatrosses, two taxa recently suggested to be separate species. Measurements were taken from a collection of 103 Shy and White-capped Albatrosses killed by longline vessels within the Australian Fishing Zone between 1988 and 2000 and identified to species level using a recently developed DNA-based test. Within-sex comparisons of Shy and White-capped Albatrosses found that six of the 10 measurements were significantly different for both sexes. However, all measurements showed considerable overlap and no single measurement separated the two taxa. Discriminant classification functions based on wing chord, maximum head width and two bill measurements were able to simultaneously identify the species and sex of approximately 84% of bycatch specimens (n = 70). The discriminate classification functions for species identification alone correctly assigned approximately 89% of bycatch specimens. When this classification method was applied to measurements taken from live specimens a similar level of accuracy was achieved (82%, n = 17)

Comparison of observed vs. expected (determined from a contingency test) values for seabird species or species complexes where > 100 individuals attempted to take baits.

<p>Numbers are italicized when observed values differ greatly (<50% or >200%) from expected values.</p>1<p>Species complex.</p

Number of seabird interactions with baited hooks by interaction category and region.

<p>Numbers are italicized when observed values differ greatly (<50% or >200%) from expected values, determined from a contingency test.</p