Discarded fishing line is killing birds

Group cleaning up monofilament to make mangroves safe
Kevin Lollar news-press.com 20 Feb 08;

An immature brown pelican dangled grotesquely Wednesday from the mangroves of a rookery island in Estero Bay.

Death by discarded fishing line: The treble hook of a lure dug into the bird’s right leg as several yards of monofilament line wrapped around the bloody limb and secured the bird to the mangrove branches.

“This one’s fresh,” said Heather Stafford, program manager of the Estero Bay and Charlotte Harbor Aquatic Preserves. “It might have just happened — last night or today.

“It makes you mad. I don’t know if people realize that birds can be hung up and killed this way.”

Along with Stafford, environmental specialist Cheryl Parrott of the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, and volunteer Pam Jones-Morton of Estero and 11 other volunteers in two other boats spent the day pulling fishing line, hooks, lures and trash from rookery islands in preparation for the upcoming nesting season.

The problem with fishing line in the environment is simple: Fishermen trying to cast near the mangroves get hung up in the trees and, instead of moving their boats to retrieve their gear, they break the line, leaving long strands hanging from the branches or prop roots.

Birds often become entangled in the line and end up hanging from the trees, where they die of starvation, dehydration or strangulation.

Over the course of five hours Wednesday, Stafford, Parrott and Jones-Morton cleaned up six islands and found three other dead and entangled birds, all badly decomposed: an immature little blue heron, a great blue heron and what was probably a snowy egret.

“We’re cleaning up these islands so we won’t find birds caught in monofilament,” Parrot said. “We want to give them a safe place to nest and have the highest nesting success rates possible.”

Discarded fishing line also can entangle and kill dolphins, sea turtles and manatees.

Monofilament, the most common kind of fishing line, can take up to 600 years to decompose.

Waiting for his charter at the Lovers Key State Park boat ramp Wednesday morning, Capt. Eric Hart said he sees less fishing line in the mangroves now than in previous years.

“More people are starting to be more conscious about it,” he said. “But there are still people out there who think if you sink a bottle to the bottom of the bay, it’s not littering.”

Another reason for less fishing line in the mangroves, Hart speculated, is more people are using braided fishing line, which is extremely strong and less likely to break when a hook is caught in the mangroves.

That theory sounded good until Parrott found the end of braided line high in the canopy of a mangrove island. Following the line for about 30 feet, she found the rotting carcass of a great blue heron wrapped in the braided line and a long piece of monofilament.

“In the best of all worlds, fishermen along the mangroves would gather their line if they got hung up,” Stafford said. “Then we wouldn’t have to do this. Fishing is a great sport, and we want people to fish here, but we also want them to take their fishing line with them.”

Wednesday’s cleanup started in a chilly northeast wind as the aquatic preserve’s Boston Whaler pulled up to an island north of Lovers Key.

As the team waded ashore, they saw the white feathers and exposed vertebrae of the dead immature little blue heron.

“You ask why we come out here: This is why,” Jones-Morton said. “I think people think ‘out of sight, out of mind:’ If you leave fishing line behind, it’s gone. But it’s not. It stays in the environment for hundreds of years, and it only takes a day for a bird to die.”