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UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - For the third year in a row, environmental groups urged an annual UN conference on oceans to stop high sea bottom trawling, calling the practice destructive and unsustainable.
Bottom trawling vessels drag their nets along ocean floors, razing the environment by sweeping up coral, fish and other wildlife, much of which is not commercially useable. Critics claim the process is like "mining" an underwater ecosystem, leaving no chance for recovery.
"These are extremely fragile, vulnerable ecosystems," said Callum Roberts of Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an alliance of 50 environmental groups, at a UN press conference. "They're being destroyed today by a very small industry ... and no industry should be allowed to do that."
The coalition estimates there are roughly 250 bottom trawling vessels in deep international waters, but say their impact is devastating because these largely unexplored areas are slow-developing and fish can sometimes live for 150 years.
High sea bottom trawling began in the 1960s when the Soviets discovered valuable fish concentrated around sea mounts, said Roberts, but countries whose coastal fish stocks are now being depleted, are also exploring these areas.
Roberts warned, however, that high sea bottom trawling would never be sustainable because of the ecosystems' unique nature.
"If you're fishing at profitable levels, you're fishing in the manner of mining a resource -- removing it with no possibility of recovery," he said.
Fish caught in the high seas, like the orange roughy, are typically sold at high prices in European, American and Japanese markets, said Karen Sack of Greenpeace International, which reported stopping a bottom trawling vessel from casting its nets in the South Pacific on Tuesday.
Sack said countries like Chile, Norway and Mexico are showing support for a moratorium on high sea bottom trawling, but fishing giant Spain has been a big opponent to a proposed ban.For more information, visit
Deepsea Conservation Coalition, an alliance of over 40 international organizations, representing millions of people in countries around the world.
From their website:
6 June 2005 - New York. As the United Nations Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (UNICPOLOS) meeting begins today, the international community faces a crisis of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing.
The high seas make up the majority of the world's oceans and large parts of the high seas are devoid of effective internationally agreed controls for activities such as high seas bottom trawling making it the single biggest area open to abuse and exploitation.
Fishing is stripping the bio-diversity of the world's oceans and primary amongst the unregulated threats facing the deep seas is high seas bottom trawling, a fishing practice universally accepted as the most destructive in use and which wipes out entire ecosystems for the sake of a few commercially valuable species. Scientists estimate that if urgent action is not taken to regulate bottom trawling, most deep sea fish stocks on the high seas caught today will be commercially extinct in 20 years.
For the past three years, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) has responded to the UNICPOLOS calls for urgent action to be taken. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) is calling for UNICPOLOS this year to send a strong recommendation to the UNGA for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.
Matthew Gianni, Political Advisor to the DSCC said: "The tide is turning. UNICPOLOS cannot simply call for action again, it has to play a part in precipitating it and the ground work is now there for that to happen. Countries which had previously opposed and blocked measures to protect the high seas are now changing their positions and we have a real opportunity to finally translate the fine words into a commitment to take concrete action."
The major obstacles to progress thus far have been Iceland and the EU lead by Spain but there has been a strong shift in the stances taken by individual EU countries during the last few months, with Spain (the single biggest high seas bottom trawling nation—at least among those States reporting their catch), accepting that the practice is a highly destructive and proposing limited measures for addressing it.
This week the UNICPOLOS will discuss the contribution of fisheries to sustainable development. Without sustainable and effective management of the world's fisheries and oceans beyond national jurisdiction, deep-sea fisheries, together with many irreplaceable habitats and unique species will be quickly wiped out and many may be lost forever.
Matthew Gianni: "It is high time that the high seas were firmly on the agenda for action. Until the global commons of the high seas are subject to proper management, IUU fishing will continue to flourish. Unless bottom trawling in these areas is controlled, there will be very little left to manage. Tackling bottom trawling is the key to unlocking a genuinely sustainable approach."
The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition is an alliance of over 40 international organizations, representing millions of people in countries around the world. It is calling for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling until the nations of the world can establish strong management measures for deep-sea fisheries and protect biodiversity on the high seas.What are seamounts?A great deal of deep-seas biodiversity is concentrated around seamounts which are underwater mountains that rise 1,000 meters or higher from the seabed without breaking the ocean's surface. It is estimated that there may be as many as 30,000 to 100,000 seamounts worldwide. They are home to cold-water coral reefs and forests, sponge beds and hydrothermal vents, as well as the many millions of species dependent on these. And because many seamounts are located in remote surroundings –underwater islands, essentially — virtually every study finds species that were previously unknown and are endemic, meaning that they are unique to that area.
Seamounts are not only physically impressive, but like an oasis in the desert, provide an important source of food. Because of their physical characteristics and strong localized currents, they accumulate enormous quantities of plankton. The plankton, in turn, attracts a vast array of marine life, providing feeding as well as spawning grounds for myriad pelagic species, including some that have migrated across wide oceanic areas.
Home to large marine mammals, such as dolphins and whales and an extraordinary diversity of fish, together with exotic sponge and coral ecosystems, seamounts are among the world's greatest marine-biological treasures.
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Topic: UN urged to stop bottom trawling fishing (Read 2175 times)