Brown pelican at risk for entanglements with fishing lines, hooks at Bay Area piers, study shows

TIERRE VERDE, Fla. - The brown pelican is a common sight around Pinellas County and the official city bird for St. Petersburg – but they face deadly situations along fishing piers as they encounter fishing lines and hooks.

New research is shedding light on brown pelican entanglements and the factors that cause these dangerous and sometimes deadly situations to happen. It comes at a time when rescuers are being inundated with calls for birds caught in fishing line. 

The study's findings are already leading to changes at the Gulf Fishing Pier in Fort DeSoto Park.

Videos show Brown pelicans wrapped in fishing lines and hooks puncturing their skin. Fairl Thomas, a volunteer rescuer and recent graduate of Eckerd College, sees it first-hand.

"It's gut-wrenching to go out there and see so many birds entangled," Thomas said.

She's been rescuing them in different places all over the Bay Area since she was 18.

"I kind of decided that just going out there and rescuing isn't enough. We needed to get some hard data on this so that they can actually use it for management of the situation," Thomas said.

FROM 2020: No longer unofficial: The brown pelican is finally the official city bird for St. Pete

For the last three years, she's been carrying out a study on brown pelican entanglements at the Skyway Fishing Pier and the Fort DeSoto Gulf Fishing Pier. Thomas said she learned the abandoned parts of Skyway Pier played a major factor in entanglements.

"They roost there, and they're so adjacent to the people who are fishing when they go to dive for fish, they're flying right through people's lines," Thomas said.

At the Fort DeSoto Gulf Fishing Pier, it was a similar story. There are places for pelicans to perch means more opportunities for entanglements.

"There's a rock jetty that the pelicans congregated on and at the end of the rock jetty, there was a deep spot where all of the bait congregates," Thomas explained. "That's where everybody's favorite fishing spot was as well as the pelicans so actually after my study was published, the preliminary, they went ahead and closed off the section of the pier."

Thomas' research is already leading to changes.

"That significantly reduced the amount of rescue calls that we were getting out on that pier," Thomas said.

Her research study "The Role of Fishing Piers in Brown Pelican Entanglement" has now been published in Animals an international, peer-reviewed journal.

"Being able to publish something that the managed makers can now use and make decisions that can last a lifetime for these animals and us, as well as just the whole community," Thomas said. "So, it's it feels great to know that it's making a difference."