Smart Seabird award winners set examples for the future

Fishing operators are working with the Southern Seabird Solutions Trust to ensure the wellbeing of many species, such as the black petrel. Photo / Creative Commons

The winners of the Seabird Smart awards for 2015 were announced by Minister of Conservation Maggie Barry, in an event at Parliament.

The Southern Seabird Solutions Trust is a collaboration between seafood industry representatives, the Government, WWF-New Zealand, Te Ohu Kaimoana and recreational anglers to ensure a sustainable future for fishing.

"The winners of this year's Seabird Smart awards are the sustainable future of New Zealand fishing", says Bill Mansfield, chair of the trust.

"New Zealand is known as the seabird capital of the world. As the breeding grounds for a third of the world's seabirds species, we have an international responsibility to ensure their long-term survival."

Mansfield says the main award winners - Tom Searle, operations manager of Leigh Fisheries, and Mike Black of Talley's - have changed the behaviour of their entire fishing fleets to ensure the wellbeing of seabirds in the ecosystems in which they fish.

Mr Searle requires every longline skipper involved with Leigh Fisheries to have attended a Seabird Smart Training workshop. He has also worked with liaison officers, joint funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Department of Conservation, to prepare Seabird Risk Management Plans for each of his company's vessels.

He has also helped coordinate fishing expeditions to the black petrel colony on Great Barrier Island, which he says "ensures these majestic birds are protected for the few months they are in the Gulf raising their chicks."

As depot supervisor for Talley's in Bluff, Mike Black manages 20 vessels from Moeraki to Jackson Bay. When enlisted by the Southern Inshore Fisheries Management Company to make their Seabird Risk Management Plans for inshore trawlers, the job was done in two weeks.

Mr Black grew up in a household where conservation and fishing were thought of as closely linked. Along with his father, he is also passionate about good rubbish management on vessels and took part in the Fiordland beach cleanup for 2015.

Two special awards were also given this year.

"As a fisher, Wayne Dreadon of Whitianga has championed fishers working collaboratively with government and environmental groups, and Jamie Williamson, a fisheries observer, has given fishers a new appreciation of the seabirds they see every day around their vessels," says Mansfield.

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