On World Oceans Day, we’ve launched Stop Bycatch, a fundraising campaign to prevent the incidental capture of seabirds in fishing gear – one of the biggest threats to the world’s most endangered bird group. Every year, an estimated 200 thousand seabirds – such as gannets, shearwaters and razorbills – die in European waters, accidentally caught in fishing nets, lines and hooks.
The Stop Bycatch campaign aims to support the deployment of measures such as ‘scarybird’ kites, a kind of kite shaped like a bird of prey, which seabirds mistake for a predator; when they see the ‘scarybird’ kite, seabirds keep their distance.
“We know the scarybird works, and that fishermen like this solution. Now we want to get it to more and more fishermen, throughout Portugal and beyond,” says Domingos Leitão, Executive Director of SPEA. “With everybody’s help, we can save thousands of seabirds.”
As well as deploying the ‘scarybird’ in more fishing vessels, we also aim to continue to test other measures and continue to work with fishing communities to raise awareness of this issue and find the best solutions.
Help us raise funds to keep up this work:
- Visit www.stopbycatch.spea.pt
- Donate
- Spread the word!
