In Ecuador, Increased Dangers at Sea Hinder Seabird Conservation

Bobbing up and down some 10 miles from the port of Santa Rosa, Ecuador, Victor Balón turns off his motorboat and cuts up bits of fish. His crewman, Viejo, uses the flesh to bait hooks on a fishing line, which he slides into long PVC tubes fastened to the side of the boat. Every 20 hooks or so, he attaches a smaller line connected to a cement weight. It takes a tedious 20 minutes to place all 247 hooks inside the tubes, but the procedure comes with huge payoffs, I’m assured.

Balón—or Flaco, as everyone calls him—throws the Minervita 2’s engine into gear, leaving a smack of jellyfish behind in the Pacific Ocean waves. Viejo tosses the first weight overboard and hooks come flying out, sinking immediately. He watches carefully and throws out weights at regular intervals. Two minutes and 38 seconds later, the entire 1,300-foot line has disappeared. 

On this hot and thankfully overcast April morning, Flaco is driving slowly so I can observe; at full speed, the pair can set these hooks in under a minute. As it is, I hardly see the bait zip into the sea, and that’s precisely the point: The faster the hooks sink well beneath the surface, the less chance for critically endangered Waved Albatross and other seabirds to go after the food—and the lower the risk they’ll get caught in the line. 

“That’s what we’re aiming for with this system: to improve the way we fish,” says biologist Giovanny Suárez Espín, who has joined us on the boat today for a demonstration of the bird-friendly fishing device. “Prevent the deaths of seabirds and make fishing easier.”

We don’t see any albatrosses. The giant seabirds usually forage farther offshore at this time of year, which is also where Flaco typically would seek out tuna, sea bass, rockfish, and swordfish. However, for my safety, Flaco doesn’t venture too far from the coast. On the open sea, he and other people fishing face threats themselves. 

Each day hundreds of small boats just like the Minervita 2 fish from Santa Rosa, one of Ecuador’s largest artisanal fishing ports in one of the world’s most productive coastal fishing areas. Compared to commercial or industrial operations, these fishermen typically use relatively modest vessels and low-technology gear and pull in a smaller volume of catch. In Ecuador and Peru, tens of thousands of artisanal or small-scale fishers support their families this way. 

It’s never been an easy or lucrative career. Many fishermen don’t finish high school so that they can provide for their families at a young age, and poverty is visible in the port, where boats run on old motors, and tape, string, and cables secure rusty gear. But now their work is getting harder. Overfishing and climate change are forcing fishermen to head farther offshore to pursue catch on grueling multiday trips. What’s more, organized crime has spiked along the coast as a growing number of gangs seek control of drug trafficking routes. Fishermen get caught in the crosshairs: In 2024, 230 disappeared and 60 were murdered at sea, according to the Federation of Artisanal Fishing Organizations of Ecuador. 

Yet despite the increasing risks and challenges they themselves face, many fishermen here are still looking out for albatrosses and other avian life. Like the fishermen, the birds are vulnerable.

In the famed 18th century poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a sailor indiscriminately kills an albatross and must carry the burden around his neck throughout life. Today, it’s albatrosses we have burdened with a litany of threats. 

On their nesting grounds, the seabirds face invasive predators, avian flu, and other diseases. At sea, where they spend most of their lives soaring over the open water, accumulating plastics pollution, warming oceans, and intensifying storms are growing hazards. But fishing activities may pose the biggest challenge. Up to 100,000 albatrosses a year may be killed as bycatch globally, particularly in longline fisheries where the birds go for bait, get caught on a hook or tangled in a line, and drown. 

When a foraging adult dies, its death can have an outsize effect on the next generation, says Don Lyons, conservation science director of Audubon’s Seabird Institute. Albatrosses generally mate with a single partner over their long lives, lay at most one egg a year, and share parental duties. “You can drive that population to extinction pretty rapidly because it cannot bounce back very fast at all if adults are being lost,” he says.

More than 20 years ago, experts became concerned about declines among albatrosses and some related seabirds, including petrels and shearwaters. Governments and other organizations came together to create the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP), a legally binding treaty to protect these birds on land and at sea. Today 13 nations are signatories, yet despite some advancements, 15 of 22 albatross species are still threatened or endangered. 

The Waved Albatross’s decline illustrates some difficulties that conservationists face. The largest bird of the Galápagos Islands, the species forms a part of the marine ecosystem, linking land and sea by fertilizing soil and coral reefs with guano. It nests primarily on the uninhabited Española Island, a popular tourist day-trip stop and a conservation haven surrounded by one of the world’s largest marine protected areas. Yet despite millions of dollars spent protecting the archipelago’s rare and endemic species, the Waved Albatross—also known as the Galápagos Albatross—is in a critical state. In 2008, researchers found its population had dropped 42 percent in 13 years to an estimated 15,000 to 16,000 adults. 

The greatest dangers remain out at sea, where researchers don’t have eyes and ears, says Sebastian Cruz, a seabird ecologist from the Galápagos who has tracked the birds for years. GPS tag data show that the species mainly forages directly around the Galápagos in June and July, when recently hatched chicks need food fast. At other times, they travel to several points along the coast of southern Ecuador and Peru, making trips of up to 3,000 miles. When the birds return to Española, Cruz says, researchers sometimes see fishing gear lodged in their wings or beaks.

Yet making oceans safer for seabirds is tricky. Thanks partly to ACAP’s efforts over the past two decades, says Cruz, a growing number of international and national fishery regulators are requiring vessels to use simple bycatch mitigation practices, such as weighting fishing lines to sink hooks faster, towing colorful streamers to scare birds away, or fishing at night when most birds don’t forage. Such measures can be effective: Hawai‘i, for example, saw a 67 percent decrease in seabird bycatch after rules implemented in 2001 required the longline tuna industry to use heavier weighted lines and encouraged night fishing, among other measures. In Namibia’s bottom trawl and longline fisheries, seabird bycatch dropped by more than 98 percent since bird-scaring lines became mandatory in 2015. 

Still, many fisheries around the world don’t require proactive seabird bycatch mitigation, even in Ecuador and other ACAP signatory nations. And when they do, rules are often difficult to enforce and apply only to industrial or commercial vessels that generally use automated gear and operate at higher volumes, posing the biggest risk. But in the Waved Albatross’s foraging grounds, scientists suspected that the roughly 80,000 artisanal fishers in Ecuador and more than 50,000 in Peru might add up to the more significant threat. It was hard to know for sure; while both countries technically require artisanal vessels to broadcast their locations, the vast majority don’t have the equipment to do so. No one is accurately and comprehensively monitoring these populations of fishermen, says Nancy De Lemos, the Latin American communications officer for Global Fishing Watch.

For more than a decade, Suárez has been trying to fill that information gap and work with artisanal fishermen to protect the Waved Albatross, as well as other species that travel across these waters, such as Pink-footed and Sooty Shearwaters. In 2012, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) asked him to help devise a system to aid local fishermen in reducing bycatch. Joining forces with two others—local biologist Andrés Rivera and visiting Australian biologist Nigel Brothers—Suárez experimented with designs to sink hooks into the water faster, trying out materials and weights and looking for practical and cheap options. The team landed on a design that they called the NISURI, combining the first letters of their names. But the bigger challenge lay ahead: They had to convince fishermen to use it.

On a shaded cement platform overlooking the Santa Rosa pier, Suárez projects a video of dozens of albatrosses surrounding a small boat. He explains the danger these birds face to about 20 fishermen, who are sprawled out on plastic chairs. Another slide shows a fisherman trying to unhook a bird from a line by grabbing its wing tip and yanking it into the boat. “This is not how you do it,” says Suárez, and the audience hollers with laughter. 

He uses plush seabird toys—two albatrosses, a petrel, and a booby—to demonstrate a safer, more gentle rescue method. A fisherman in the audience is skeptical; the birds get angry and fight back with their beaks, he says. The group leans forward as Suárez demonstrates how one person should secure the bird’s body and head from behind as another carefully frees the creature. 

Suárez has been leading these kinds of workshops in the province of Santa Elena, where Santa Rosa is located, for years. His goal is to educate fishermen on how and why they should avoid seabirds and what to do if they can’t. In the bigger picture, he wants to change their relationship to the animals. People once referred to the albatross as el pato grande—“the big duck”—and many fishermen considered the seabird a giant nuisance for pecking at their bait and flying around their lines. In other ports, some have reportedly killed albatrosses on purpose for their meat, although Santa Rosa fishermen say that has never been a practice here. 

It hasn’t been easy convincing fishermen who have been working at sea all their lives to adopt new ways, says Suárez. Most haven’t had much experience with conservation, or if they do, it may take the form of resentment. Government officials and nongovernmental groups have a history of lobbying fishing communities to adopt conservation initiatives without giving back—or not following through on promises to do so, Suárez says. 

Thanks to years of outreach, however, many here have changed their perspective. Flaco, a 57-year-old who’s been working at sea since he was a teenager, says it was once common for him to come back from a fishing excursion having hooked up to 10 albatrosses. He always felt sort of bad about it but didn’t know any other way. Now he’s been using the NISURI for more than five years and doesn’t catch seabirds at all when it’s deployed. More broadly, he’s equipped with more knowledge to protect seabirds. 

Suárez grew up fishing along these same docks. When he was 15, he decided to learn about animals rather than catch them and later studied biology at university. But when he began working as ABC’s seabird bycatch coordinator in Ecuador, he knew he’d need support to change fishermen’s habits. In 2016 he sparked up a partnership with José González Caiche, who was then president of the local fishing association. González had spent years advocating for fishermen’s rights and for training and loan programs to improve their lives. If Suárez offered incentives, González advised, fishermen would be more receptive to a conservation message. 

Working together, they provided extra fishing lines, rubber boots, rain gear, and other equipment to help foster long-term relationships. Fishermen began attending workshops and sending videos and photos of the albatrosses they spotted. Over a few years, some 25 boat owners signed up to use the NISURI system. Observers joined them on boats to teach fishers how to operate the setup, limit seabird interactions, and monitor albatross populations. Many fishers also began to self-report when they interacted with seabirds—even, Suárez says, when they’d been fishing illegally in the off-season.

Cruz was blown away by this collaborative attitude when he visited Santa Rosa for the first time in 2024, after taking a position as ABC’s South American coordinator. As he and Suárez walked on the pier, fishermen approached to share recent albatross sightings and, in one case, joked about killing one. Cruz had never been able to achieve this candid dynamic with fishers in the Galápagos. “They know what an albatross is. They know the albatross is important,” he says. “Giovanny has done that.” Despite these successes, however, the country’s rising violence is taking a clear toll.

Around 2017, the team’s efforts to ­encourage adoption of NISURI slowed. One reason could be addressed: Fishers complained that the device released only 500 hooks compared to the 1,200 they could let out manually, making it less efficient. But Suárez and González couldn’t do anything about a spike in pirate activity, thefts, and kidnappings. Some NISURI systems were stolen off boats, along with motors and anything that could be sold for parts. Due to safety risks, they stopped sending observers out to sea. When the pandemic hit in 2020, everything came to a halt, including conservation workshops and the fishing itself. 

Since the pandemic waned, Ecuador has gone from one of Latin America’s safest countries in 2018 to one of its most violent, and organized crime has changed fishing dynamics. Renato Rivera, senior analyst with the independent organization Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, says these criminal networks have been in place for years, but they’ve become more dangerous since 2020 when top gangs fragmented, increasing conflict over leadership and territory and resulting in more forced recruitments. 

As gangs seek to control ports and drug shipping routes, fishermen are among the most vulnerable groups. Artisanal fishers are forced to pay monthly vacunas, or extortion fees, says Rivera. Those whose production has fallen behind and cannot pay, he says, are susceptible to kidnapping, attacks, or being forced to deliver drugs or gasoline into international waters. Their isolation at sea increases their risk. 

There are no easy solutions to this violence. Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has leaned heavily on a military response, and in 2024 he declared an internal war against 22 gangs, putting more armed forces in the streets. (On March 3, as Audubon went to press, the United States joined Ecuador in military operations against “narco-terrorists”). These tactics, however, have done little to ensure citizen safety and well-being on the ground, says Rivera. Fishermen seem to have little faith in government intervention. Flaco says marine patrols have become a threat themselves, as they often treat fishermen like criminals, accusing them of trafficking fuel due to the large amounts they carry on multiday trips.

Suárez was well aware of these tensions but knew his job to protect seabirds wasn’t done. In 2022 he modified the NISURI system with a second tube to allow fishermen to put out up to 800 hooks. But campaigning for its use this time has been much harder, and so far only 14 people have signed up. Still, Suárez continues to see plenty of attendees at workshops across Santa Elena. “There is still curiosity,” he says. That gives him hope. 

That optimism has spurred Suárez and González to cautiously expand their workshops to fishing cooperatives in other provinces, though it’s no easy task. Many fishermen are skeptical of outsiders asking questions, which may make fishermen targets of retribution, and leery of authority figures trying to control their practices. 

González himself stepped away from his work lobbying the federal government for fishermen’s rights, after his colleague was shot and killed on the Santa Rosa pier in 2024 and no one was brought to justice. When they talk to fishing groups, the team members are careful only to discuss bird conservation. 

It is, González acknowledges, an imperfect strategy. People at a workshop in the province of Manabí last year stayed silent the entire time. “For me, that’s a failure,” he says. An event further north in Esmeraldas was more successful, he says, as the 30 attendees actively participated. But conditions in Esmeraldas, considered one of the most violent provinces, makes recurrent workshops difficult. “We took a risk,” González says. “It’s exhausting but it’s super rewarding when things turn out well.” What’s increasingly clear is that the Waved Albatross’s future depends on their efforts—and now they have the data to prove it.

As we walk down Mar Bravo, a 10-mile beach on the tip of the Santa Elena peninsula, Suárez, González, and their colleague Ivonne Becilla Cedeño scan for signs of bird carcasses in the piercing morning sun. When we approach piles of seaweed or plastic, González uses a metal detector to look for birds with hooks in them that may lie underneath. No new carcasses today, but Suárez shows me the remains of a Waved Albatross they found last month. In life it had an 8-foot wingspan, jet black eyes, and signature fluffy eyebrows that evoked a wise old man. Now it is mostly bone and some feathers. 

Suárez began conducting monthly surveys here three years ago, when he noticed currents washing refuse on shore. He keeps a tally of seabird carcasses with embedded hooks—a good indicator of what’s happening out at sea. The data also help him convince fishermen that even when they try to release birds from their lines, many die anyway. 

In 2024, Cruz and Suárez decided to use a more high-tech approach to track the impacts of artisanal vessels. They recruited willing fishers to travel with GPS devices in discreet boxes (so as to not raise suspicion should armed groups approach), aiming to identify whether their boats overlap with Waved Albatross foraging routes; it turns out they do, almost perfectly, says Cruz. So far, they’ve traced 55 fishing expeditions from 20 to 90 miles offshore and can show a strong intersection with tracks of the species. 

Cruz hopes such data can help convince lawmakers and organizations to tackle the bycatch problem. Working through the international Albatross Task Force, they want to foster collaborations to expand use of NISURI and broaden outreach to artisanal fishermen in Peru. Because there isn’t yet funding for this expansion, they’re making a series of online instructional videos to help anyone build the devices. Suárez also hopes to develop bycatch mitigation practices for fishermen who seek surface-feeding fish such as mahi mahi and so don’t sink their lines. (It would help, he says, if fishermen could be incentivized to adhere to the closed season for mahi mahi, which occurs while Waved Albatross are foraging to feed their chicks.) 

Meanwhile, scientists are pursuing other ways to give the Waved Albatross a boost. While the birds breed almost entirely on Española Island in the Galápagos, Enzo M.R. Reyes, an Ecuadorian conservationist at New Zealand’s Southern Institute of Technology, is working to expand another tiny colony on Isla de la Plata. Located about 15 miles from Ecuador’s mainland, the island was once home to dozens of nesting Waved Albatross. Last year, only four adults were spotted. Buttressing this population would provide an insurance policy for the species, should avian flu or some other disaster strike Española Island, he says. 

With support from Machalilla National Park, the Ecuadorian nonprofit Equilibrio Azul, and ABC, Reyes installed 20 albatross decoys on Isla de la Plata last year and began playing the birds’ calls from solar-powered speakers, hoping to attract at least two breeding adults to the nesting site in the next three years. While similar tactics have been successful around the world, they are usually more effective in the long term when other threats have been addressed, says Lyons. Although officials have eradicated feral goats and invasive rodents from the birds’ Galápagos nesting grounds, and put in place strict biosecurity protocols to prevent the reintroduction of nonnative species, Isla de la Plata is still home to dangerous rats.

To protect eggs and chicks from rodents, Reyes would like to eventually build a fence around potential nest areas. But according to 2014 tracking data, any albatross hatched here will still forage within what Cruz calls the “danger zone” where artisanal fishers operate. 

As long as fishermen continue living in unsafe and precarious conditions, their activities are likely to remain a risk to Waved Albatross on both islands. But Suárez faces these challenges without complaint. He knows his role is to focus on solutions—building a bridge between fishermen and seabirds with the hope that both will feel more secure on the open ocean once again. 

This story originally ran in the Spring 2026 issue as “Rough Waters.” To receive our print magazine, become a member by making a donation today.