Trawl Fishing Decimating Deep Sea Species
AFP
Feb. 10, 2004 — Fishing in international waters by dragging heavy chains, nets and steel plates across the ocean floor poses a major threat to deep-sea ecosystems and must be regulated, the WWF conservation group said Tuesday.
A study commissioned by the WWF, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council said such trawling was the most common deep-sea bottom fishing method worldwide and is considered to be the most damaging.
While the management of fisheries within exclusive economic zones is largely the responsibility of coastal states, the international community as a whole has a collective responsibility for the high seas, the report noted.
Less than 300 vessels are involved each year, making up a tiny fraction of the world's fishing fleet of three million, but their method "rapidly reduces ancient, thriving bottom complexes to rubble," the study said.
Deep sea features such as underwater mountains and cold water corals typically support slow-growing, long-lived species, with fish living up to 150 years and coral structures lasting several thousands of years.
The report was presented on the sidelines of a conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has drawn some 2,000 government officials, scientists and activists to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Fishing vessels flagged to only 13 countries, mainly from the developed world, took more than 95 percent of reported high seas bottom trawl catch in 2001, the last year for which data is available, the study shows. Those countries are expected to resist efforts to regulate their activities, officials said.
"If we try to get official figures reported on the fisheries where the bottom trawling takes place from the European Union, we can't get them," Gordon Shepherd, the WWF director of international policy, told AFP. "So if they're not willing to give out figures it seems unlikely they're going to be too happy about contemplating regulation."
The WWF hoped the Kuala Lumpur conference would recommend a moratorium on bottom trawling "so we can get the science right and the information in place that would allow us to make proper judgements on how these fisheries could be managed correctly," he said.
The contribution of trawl fishing to global food security is negligible, with the overall value not exceeding $300-400 million annually, or 0.5 percent of the estimated global marine catch of $75 billion in 2001, the report said.
But bottom trawl fishing is likely to expand in the coming years due to growing market demand for fish products in developed countries and increased regulation or restrictions on fisheries within natural jurisdiction, it warned.
The report said estimates of species inhabiting deep-sea areas range between 500,000 and 100 million, and a large percentage of these are vulnerable to extinction. It urged the United Nations to adopt and implement legally binding regimes to protect deep-sea biodiversity from high-seas bottom trawling, and to conserve and manage these fisheries.
The Convention on Biological Diversity grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and aims to protect the diversity of life on Earth, where thousands of animal and plant species face extinction, mainly from human economic development.
this is from http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040209/deepsea.html
AFP
Feb. 10, 2004 — Fishing in international waters by dragging heavy chains, nets and steel plates across the ocean floor poses a major threat to deep-sea ecosystems and must be regulated, the WWF conservation group said Tuesday.
A study commissioned by the WWF, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council said such trawling was the most common deep-sea bottom fishing method worldwide and is considered to be the most damaging.
While the management of fisheries within exclusive economic zones is largely the responsibility of coastal states, the international community as a whole has a collective responsibility for the high seas, the report noted.
Less than 300 vessels are involved each year, making up a tiny fraction of the world's fishing fleet of three million, but their method "rapidly reduces ancient, thriving bottom complexes to rubble," the study said.
Deep sea features such as underwater mountains and cold water corals typically support slow-growing, long-lived species, with fish living up to 150 years and coral structures lasting several thousands of years.
The report was presented on the sidelines of a conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which has drawn some 2,000 government officials, scientists and activists to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Fishing vessels flagged to only 13 countries, mainly from the developed world, took more than 95 percent of reported high seas bottom trawl catch in 2001, the last year for which data is available, the study shows. Those countries are expected to resist efforts to regulate their activities, officials said.
"If we try to get official figures reported on the fisheries where the bottom trawling takes place from the European Union, we can't get them," Gordon Shepherd, the WWF director of international policy, told AFP. "So if they're not willing to give out figures it seems unlikely they're going to be too happy about contemplating regulation."
The WWF hoped the Kuala Lumpur conference would recommend a moratorium on bottom trawling "so we can get the science right and the information in place that would allow us to make proper judgements on how these fisheries could be managed correctly," he said.
The contribution of trawl fishing to global food security is negligible, with the overall value not exceeding $300-400 million annually, or 0.5 percent of the estimated global marine catch of $75 billion in 2001, the report said.
But bottom trawl fishing is likely to expand in the coming years due to growing market demand for fish products in developed countries and increased regulation or restrictions on fisheries within natural jurisdiction, it warned.
The report said estimates of species inhabiting deep-sea areas range between 500,000 and 100 million, and a large percentage of these are vulnerable to extinction. It urged the United Nations to adopt and implement legally binding regimes to protect deep-sea biodiversity from high-seas bottom trawling, and to conserve and manage these fisheries.
The Convention on Biological Diversity grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and aims to protect the diversity of life on Earth, where thousands of animal and plant species face extinction, mainly from human economic development.
this is from http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040209/deepsea.html
