Tweeters;
I just received some photographs last week from a fisherman who longlines
off the Queen Charlottes in B.C. Amazingly he took the pictures with one of
those cheesy disposable cameras. We dumped one on the scanner and blew it
up. To make a long story short it turned out to show a subadult Short-tailed
Albatross. It is the 2nd record for B.C. waters since they were nearly
Dodoized in the 1940's. The 1st record was only last spring off Vancouver
Island. I think this is the 1st photograph. It is very grainy but the field
marks are clear. If anyone wants to check it out I put it on my homepage
with a little history.
http://www.iphc.washington.edu:80/pages/iphc/staff/tracee/alby.htm

For a change some good news for an endangered species .
The management agency that runs the million dollar groundfish fisheries in
the North Pacific has just imposed regulations for the 1997 fishery to
protect the Short-tailed Albatross (and by association many other seabirds).
These new restrictions involve gear and fishing modification such as
deploying scaring devices and changing the method of setting gear. Three
Short-tailed Albatross have been caught in the last 2 years and this council
has set the 1997 "take" at 2 birds after which some sort of fishery shut
down will occur. The motion to put forward the gear restrictions was made
by the fishermen themselves. They saw the writing on the wall so to speak
and realized if they didn't do something soon their fisheries would be in
jeopardy.
Tracee Geernaert
tracee at iphc.washington.edu