[Birdbycatch] Seabird declines in Japan

[Liz Mitchell]

>Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 13:42:54 +0200
>From: John Cooper <jcooper@adu.uct.ac.za>
>Reply-To: jcooper@adu.uct.ac.za
>Organization: University of Cape Town
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>To: Seabird <seabird@groa.uct.ac.za>
>Subject: [SEABIRD] [Fwd: news from The Japan Times]
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>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject: news from The Japan Times
>Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 15:30:19 -0800
>From: Jo Smith <josmith@u.washington.edu>
>To: jcooper@adu.uct.ac.za
>
>Hi John,
>This is a little dated but still might be of interest to SEABIRD.  I
>was forwarded this a few days ago.
>The URL still works.
>http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fe20021031mb.htm
>
>Please post if you don't think has already circulated on the
>listservice.
>Cheers,
>
>Jo
>
>----------------------------------------
>Joanna Smith
>University of Washington
>School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
>Box 355020, Seattle WA 98195
>tel: +206-221-5294
>josmith@u.washington.edu
>
>
>
>WILD WATCH
>ALL AT SEA
>Birds' island havens failing whole species
>By MARK BRAZIL       "The Japan Times"      October 31, 2002
>
>Teuri-jima Island is a special place, being a legally protected breeding
>habitat of seabirds. It was also the main subject of a recent Japan-U.S.
>government-level symposium in the nearby mainland town of Haboro,
>Hokkaido. Shocking facts emerged from that meeting.
>
>
>
>
>Over recent decades, local residents have taken the common murre
>(ororoncho) to their hearts. Images of it have made their way onto
>posters, stained
>glass -- and even steel drain covers. In every way, the common murre has
>become the town's symbol. Yet the birds themselves have quietly slipped
>away.
>Seventy years ago, 40,000 murres crowded the nesting cliffs of
>Teuri-jima.
>In the 1960s, that throng had dwindled to about 8,000, and by the 1980s
>to
>the low hundreds. This year, there were just 13.
>That any bird in Japan should have suffered such a fate is saddening,
>but
>when it is the symbol bird of a "seabird" town, it is shocking. And this
>bleak picture gets even worse. Though the rapid decimation of one
>seabird
>species should ring warning bells -- when a whole suite of species
>follows, there should be an adrenaline rush of panic.
>This is the case in Hokkaido, where, over the last 10 years, the fate of
>the common murre has been shared at other locations by the tufted
>puffin (etopirika) -- symbol bird of Hamanaka and Nemuro -- of which
>there are now fewer
>than 15 pairs; the spectacled guillemot (keimafuri), which once
>occurred by the thousand throughout the Tohoku region and
>Hokkaido, but which is now down to fewer than 100 pairs and declining by
>8
>to 15 percent a year; the ancient murrelet, of which there are now fewer
>than 20 pairs; and the red-faced cormorant.
>Together, the fates of these seabirds points to a catastrophe in the
>making -- and a glaring gap in legislation.
>This gap exists because though these seabirds are legally protected,
>there
>are no exclusion zones to protect their feeding areas. Hence,
>ironically,
>anyone wishing to study them at close quarters will be daunted by the
>paperwork required, yet any fishers killing them accidentally in a net
>are
>immune to punishment.
>Under almost equally bizarre circumstances, another seabird, the
>black-tailed gull (umineko), lives a double life.
>On Teuri, where its population declined from 20,000 pairs in the 1980s
>to
>half that number by the late 1990s, it is the focus of concern. There,
>conservationists are looking for ways to prevent any further decline in
>its numbers -- a decline accelerated by the appetites of the island's
>300-odd feral cats.
>Meanwhile, to the north, on Rishiri, just west of Wakkanai, the same
>seabird is under attack . . . from islanders who have eradicated nests
>and
>eggs, forced a colony to move through disturbance, and have tried
>various
>other means to reduce the population. It seems that in their campaign to
>cull the gulls, they haven't ever considered the possibility of them
>being
>a major tourist attraction for the future.
>Nevertheless, that leaves the black-tailed gulls in a precarious
>position.
>If the Rishiri birds were to move to Teuri, they would receive moral
>support from local conservationists -- but would likely have their eggs
>and chicks eaten by cats. Conversely, if the Teuri gulls were to escape
>the cats by moving to Rishiri, they would likely be persecuted there by
>people.
>In another odd twist of wildlife law, while no one can be prosecuted
>under
>the Conservation of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora
>legislation
>for killing native seabirds in fishing nets, any attempt to control the
>feral cats invites prosecution. Why? Because the introduced alien
>species
>is protected by anti-cruelty laws, so you can't just go around
>eradicating them without special permission.
>What this symposium starkly highlighted was the enormous contrast
>between
>Japan's laws and those in both the United States and Russia. For
>instance,
>if Alaskan fishers accidentally kill a handful of Japanese short-tailed
>albatrosses as the seabirds pass through American waters, their fishing
>industry could face being closed down -- a considerable incentive to
>avoiding bycatch. To the north in Russia, Japanese fishers are fined for
>each seabird they kill. Meanwhile in Japan, fishers suffer no
>consequences
>whatever, regardless of how many seabirds they kill. It seems that the
>Endangered Species Act in the U.S., and the equivalent laws in Russia,
>provide better protection for Japanese seabirds than Japan's own laws
>do!
>But the symposium was not merely waving a red flag signalling imminent
>extinction for several of Japan's seabirds. It was addressing bigger
>issues, too -- not least the state and fate of our oceans and those who
>depend on them, both humans and non-humans.
>For more than 20 years, Hokkaido's coastal fishing communities have been
>shifting from species to species as each declines to the point where
>it's
>not just the livelihood of future generations that is compromised, but
>that of the current generation, too. The seas appear to represent such a
>boundless resource, a source of endless seafood . . . and a bottomless
>pit
>for waste dumping. Fishing communities, however, are realizing the
>limits,
>though they're not yet acting on that realization.
>Among the symposium's many distinguished speakers from the U.S. and
>Japan,
>it was Haruo Ogi, a professor at Hokkaido University, who stunned me the
>most. His work on plastic waste has shown that much of the 50 million
>tons
>of the stuff generated annually worldwide reaches the oceans. Some
>floats,
>some submerges to different depths, some sinks to the bottom, so that it
>is affecting every layer of the ocean. The density of plastic and resin
>fragments is so great in some areas, Ogi has found, that it reaches 2
>million pieces per sq. km. The particles may be tiny, but nevertheless
>they affect light penetration and hence primary production of the seas
>--
>and, of course, birds and fish mistakenly ingest them for food.
>The symposium was a reminder of the enormity of the issues we face in
>relying on the oceans. But alas, it fell short of proposing concrete
>responses to the pressing problems of pollution, bycatch and
>overfishing. The Japan Times: Oct. 31, 2002
>(C) All rights reserved
>http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fe20021031mb.htm
>--

Elizabeth Mitchell
P.O. Box 933
Eugene, Oregon 97440
U.S.A.
Tel: 541/344-5503
E-mail: emitch@efn.org