Tomasz Raczyński's Image

Tomasz is an observer on commercial pelagic trawlers in the South Pacific, which gives him the perfect opportunity for seabird photography - the equivalent, he says, of being on a huge birdtable at sea.

Fish falling from the nets as they are pulled up are an irresistible lure. Here, a black-browed albatross has just surfaced after diving for the discarded horse mackerel and is being set upon by a rabble of other birds. By comparison to the albatross-friendly trawlers, longline-fishing ships are death traps - the cause of the decline of 18 out of the 22 species of albatross. Their hooked lines, set to catch fish such as tuna and toothfish, can be miles long and kill an estimated 100,000 albatrosses annually.