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Seabirds forage in highly productive areas of the ocean, the very same places targeted by commercial fishing vessels. Attracted by bait, or the promise of an ‘easy meal’, seabirds often end up killed as they are caught on the hooks of longlines, or entangled in nets or trawls. This is referred to as ‘seabird bycatch’. Fishing vessels use a range of fishing gear types, such as longlines, trawls, purse seines and gillnets, each posing a different type of risk to seabird species. These incidental catches result in the death of hundreds of thousands of seabirds every year across the world. In Europe it is estimated that over 200,000 birds are killed in gillnets and longlines. This also represents a costly problem for fishermen, who want to catch fish and not birds.
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Climate change disrupts the complex oceanographic cycles that govern marine ecosystems. It causes ocean surface-waters to warm, sea-level to rise, accelerates coastal erosion, causes widespread flooding which impacts key species in the food-web system as well as species dependent on low-lying coastal habitats, including seabirds.
Seabirds are a key indicator of the magnitude of climate-induced changes in oceans. Urgent, swift and decisive mitigation actions are needed.
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Marine litter is a major driver of marine and coastal ecosystems degradation. Plastic, in particular, represents 90% of the floating marine debris, and is accumulating in the seas and coasts mainly due to current unsustainable consumption and production patterns, poor waste management and the lack of public awareness. Ingestion of plastic is deadly for marine life and has detrimental impacts on populations of seabirds. Tackling waste in the marine environment is an EU level ambition under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD).
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Invasive alien species (IAS) are those whose introduction and/or spread outside their natural distribution threatens the native biological diversity. Although not every non-native species causes problems, those that are invasive tend to have few natural predators in their new habitat and can reproduce rapidly and with extreme success, which is when their impact becomes severe. Invasive alien species are one of the major threats to global biodiversity and they have been the primary driver of documented bird extinctions.
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Stichting BirdLife Europe gratefully acknowledges financial support from the European Commission. All content and opinions expressed on these pages are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe.
