SEABIRDS NO COMPETITORS TO FISHERMEN…

Highly productive waters of the North Pacific provide favorable conditions for existence of a great number of seabirds. In the past, they served humans as a source of food and a material for handcrafted clothing and tools. In our times this significance has been lost. Now, the prevailing point is that the seabirds are of no use any more. What's more, feeding on fish, they are thought to be diminishing marine resources, thus presenting serious competition to fisheries.

This attitude can hardly be called fair. Indeed, at the sites of the largest gathering of seabirds, they are able to consume the marine resources in quantities, comparable only to industrial catching. However, the best part of their prey is made of non-commercial fish and invertebrates. But, in contrast to human beings, seabirds not just take tribute from the sea, but pay back in kind fertilizing the off-shore waters with their excrements. According to the observations of Magadan ornithologists a million of birds nestling on the Talan Island, located in the North-Western part of the Sea of Okhotsk, consume every day about 200 tons of feed producing over 100 tons of soluble compounds of phosphorus and nitrogen. Powerful input of biogenic elements into the sea surface facilitates and expedites growth of phyto- and zooplankton, basis for the tropic chain the commercial fish species have been a proved a link of. So, the seabirds are found to assist the fish resource regeneration, considerably making up for what they consume.

In recent twenty years, on the Pribiloff and Saint Mathew Islands of the eastern Bering Sea, observed was a drastic decrease in population and effective reproduction of fish-eating sea birds. One of the possible reasons is a very intensive industrial fishing, that caused changes in the age structure of the local pollock stocks, which constitute the feeding source for the seabirds flocks in that region. Fisheries affect birds but not just indirectly. Millions of birds perish getting caught in the nets during fishing operations. According to American experts" estimations, mortality of seabirds in Alaska resulting from industrial fishing is registered higher than from all other human activities combined. Many birds fall victims to driftnet fishing in the Far Eastern Waters.