Every winter vast numbers of cuttlefish come to breed and die in the waters off Woollongong, and several species of albatross gather to feed on the carcasses, the wanderers travelling up to 9,000 miles. In the 21st century, however, it could come to symbolize something altogether less romantic. Every year the world's fishing fleet throws back into the sea some 20 million tonnes of fish and other marine wildlife, known as 'bycatch'. And every year some 40,000 albatrosses, mostly young birds, form a part of it. This is not a case of humans and albatrosses competing for a food, but of carelessness on an industrial scale.
Albatrosses follow longline fishing boats for the waste thrown overboard.
They also scavenge the baits as they are paid out from the stern of the ship. Once hooked they are drawn underwater by the sinking longline and are drowned. The death-rate works out at around 0.4 albatrosses per 1,000 hooks. Between 70 and 100 million hooks are set each year in the Southern Oceans. The southern bluefin tuna was fished out in the 1980s by the Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean fleets, using up to 180 million hooks per year between them.