Albatross Cops: problematising a novel bird-based approach to fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance

Keywords: more-than-human geography, marine conservation, fisheries governance, digital ecologies
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Many seabird populations worldwide are in decline, and have been heralded as ‘canaries
in the coal mine’ for increasing hostile conditions in Anthropocene oceans. Amongst this
species group, albatrosses are perhaps most threatened of all, with 15 out of 22
species classified as globally threatened. This is principally the result of expansion
in the spatial footprint and capacities of industrial fishing, and bycatch in these fisheries. Whilst foraging for food, seabirds become hooked on baited longlines, entangled in nets, and collide with trawler cables. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing presents a particularly severe threat, as these vessels are unlikely to employ bycatch mitigation
techniques. Rather than view albatrosses as passive victims,
however, a number of projects are enrolling the birds in the surveillance of human
activities which threaten them. The most prominent of these, Ocean Sentinel, fits albatrosses
with sensing devices capable of detecting radar emissions and locations of suspected illegal
fishing vessels and transmitting this information to enforcement agencies operating in the southern Indian Ocean. In this paper I consider the implications of this novel
mode of ‘on-bird’ fisheries surveillance, in terms of potential risks to the birds
themselves as they become enrolled as ‘albatross cops’, and how fisheries-related issues
are rendered knowable and actionable from a ‘bird’s eye view’. I speak to calls for consideration of the ethical, political, and social effects of novel technologies for environmental surveillance and governance, and extend existing literature to consider and problematise the growing role played by animals in these assemblages.