One issue that I heard about last year, in regards to murres, is that party fishing boats were catching quite a few murres on their lines. The increase in the number of birds caught was attributed to a change in the placement of the hook on the lures that are being used. If so, could you send any info along to me. If there is a problem you could warn other fisherman about this. I will say that the biggest issue that we see on the murre project, next to oilspills, is that boats get too close to breeding coloinies.
Murres are extremely jumpy birds and tend to flush from their colonies when people get too close.
When fishermen ask me how far they should stay from a colony I always answer about 1 mile to be extremely safe. So, if you could give fisherman a heads up to stay away from the breeding colonies along the coast that would be a great help. At the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge we have closures around the island during the breeding season to help protect the birds but we do not have the same restrictions at nearshore colonies. So we do get disturbances from time to time and it only takes one to ruin a successful breeding season for a murre. I am sure that many murres lost their eggs and chicks from this one event.