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Greenpeace urges ban on deep-sea trawling nets
The group claims technique has depleted fish stocks and ruined habitats
Alison Auld
Canadian Press
July 25, 2005
HALIFAX -- The international agency that manages the fishery on the high seas has done such a miserable job of protecting fish stocks that it needs to introduce a moratorium on the controversial practice of trawling, according to a report to be released today.
Greenpeace will ask the Canadian government to impose a temporary ban on the disputed fishing method, claiming it has depleted fish stocks and destroyed their habitats with its massive nets that sweep along the ocean floor.
The appeal comes amid assertions that the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, which determines quotas in international waters, has managed the resource so poorly that many fish species are under moratoria while member countries that violate fishing regulations continue to go unpunished.
"NAFO has been responsible for managing one of the richest areas of biodiversity in the fisheries for the last 20 to 25 years and has basically failed miserably," said Karen Sack, a Greenpeace lawyer and co-author of the 21-page report obtained by The Canadian Press.
"It needs to change significantly and change now in order to responsibly manage those resources so there are fish for the future."
Sack said that NAFO, which was formed in 1979, has adopted such weak conservation and management practices that as of 2005, 10 of the fish stocks under its jurisdiction have been so overfished that moratoria have been placed on them.
Part of that is due to trawling, which involves dragging a large net over the sea floor and picking up everything in its wake while shearing off corals and sea mounts, or underwater mountains.
Marine conservation groups have been lobbying for years to have an international moratorium put in place, but only a few countries have restricted the activity.
"If we wait for the international agencies to move on their own to protect these sea mounts, there'll be nothing left," said Mark Butler, a marine specialist with the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax.
"And 10 years from now, we'll put in some international regime to protect them, but so much of it will be gone. It's a total, utter tragedy."
Greenpeace plans to send a vessel to the nose and tail of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland today to document the effects of trawling in waters outside the 200-mile limit.
Observers will monitor what is pulled up in the nets and thrown over as bycatch -- species other than what is being fished for.
The group will report its findings when its vessel, the Esperanza, returns to Halifax.
"What we're out there to prove is that it is a destructive fishing method and that untold amounts of deep sea life is being destroyed as well as the fisheries, which are being made unsustainable through this fishing practice," said Sack.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005