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  WWF 21 Nov 06
Plundering Europe's high seas

BBC 24 Nov 06
Ban on 'brutal' fishing blocked

Yahoo News 24 Nov 06
Moves to impose trawling ban stymied
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

Yahoo News 23 Nov 06
U.N. fails in bid to ban ocean trawling
By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations negotiators failed to agree on Thursday on a measure banning a fishing practice known as high-seas bottom trawling that environmentalists say chews up the ocean floor and depletes fish stocks.

Days of negotiations in a General Assembly committee on the world body's annual resolution on ocean fisheries ended in the early morning hours of Thursday with no deal on a bottom trawling ban in the face of strong opposition from a handful of fishing nations led by Iceland, conservation groups said.

The resolution is due to be taken up by the 192-nation General Assembly on December 7, minus strong language regulating bottom trawling.

But routine approval is expected as the membership of the assembly's legal committee, where the negotiations took place, is identical to the full assembly's.

"The international community should be outraged that Iceland could almost single-handedly sink deep-sea protection and the food security of future generations," said Karen Sack of Greenpeace International. General Assembly resolutions, while not legally binding, carry great weight with governments as they reflect the will of the international community.

A bottom trawl is a cone-shaped net that is towed by one or two boats across the sea floor, as much as 4,600 feet (1,400 meters) below the surface, its pointed end retaining all the fish that are scooped up.

It can cause damage to extremely slow growing ecosystems, particularly coral reefs, and also depletes other marine life that is captured by the nets.

Eleven nations have high-seas bottom trawling fleets -- Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia and Spain.

The organisms that live in the benthic regions -- on the bottom of the sea -- can survive without light and tolerate low temperatures. The World Conservation Union says between 500,000 and 100 million species are thought to inhabit these areas.

Environmentalists have been lobbying for a U.N. moratorium on bottom trawling, arguing that the practice, while not in extensive use, is the most destructive of all fishing methods.

Australia, the United States, Britain, Norway, New Zealand, Brazil, India, South Africa, Chile, Germany, Canada and Palau were among nations supporting efforts to strictly regulate the practice, conservation groups said.

Yahoo News 24 Nov 06
Moves to impose trawling ban stymied
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Fishing nations led by Iceland and Russia have blocked U.N. negotiators from imposing a full-fledged ban against destructive bottom trawling on the high seas.

After weeks of talks in New York, a United Nations committee that oversees high seas fisheries failed to gain unanimous support this week for ending unregulated bottom trawling.

Fishing boats that drag giant nets along the sea floor can be as destructive as they are effective, wiping out creatures and habitats while scooping up everything in their path, according to a National Academy of Sciences report in 2002.

Iceland and Russia, along with China and South Korea, resisted a proposed ban that had the backing of President Bush and U.S. allies such as Britain, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

"There were several countries that really didn't want any controls at all," Assistant Secretary of State Claudia McMurray said in an interview Friday. "Unfortunately, the resolution comes up short. We're very disappointed that this is the result we ended up with."

Any one country can hold up the committee's closed-door negotiations.

Because of the impasse, the proposed ban probably won't be considered at a plenary meeting of the 192-nation U.N. assembly next month in New York.

A draft resolution privately adopted by the committee — a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press — recommends that nations either ensure boats aren't causing harm or "cease to authorize fishing vessels flying their flag to conduct bottom fisheries" on the high seas.

The draft resolution also asks fishery management organizations to help reduce damage from bottom trawling. Such organizations exist in the North Atlantic, the Southeast Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

The remaining 75 percent of the high seas has no regulations for bottom trawling.

More than 60 conservation groups that campaigned for more than two years for a ban on unregulated high seas bottom trawling are discouraged, but not giving up.

Joshua Reichert, director of the private Pew Charitable Trusts' environment division, which coordinated the groups' campaign, called the rejection of the ban "a stunning example of dysfunctional decision-making and the unwillingness of the world's nations to stand up and just say 'no' to activity that is destroying the global marine environment."

Conservationists say nations are letting fishing boats destroy a resource before its true worth is even known. They say the committee's alternative measures keep in place the status quo, by leaving it to countries to decide whether and when and where to use the fishing gear.

"It's exactly what states are supposed to be doing anyway. It's nothing new," said Karen Sack, oceans policy adviser to Greenpeace International. "Our real concern is for those states that don't do it — that allow their vessels to fish in any way they want."

But McMurray said the resolution at least kick-starts the process of establishing more regulatory bodies to determine where bottom trawling is most harmful. "We have a lot of work to do but this at least moves us a few steps forward," she said. "We're going to keep the pressure on."

A U.N. draft environmental report this month labeled bottom trawling a danger to unique and unexplored ecological systems. It said slightly more than half the underwater mountain and coral ecosystems in the world can be found beyond the protection of national boundaries.

Bottom trawling catches orange roughy, blue ling and other fish. But it smashes coral and stirs clouds of sediment that smother sea life, the U.N. report said, inflicting the worst damage on underwater seamounts that are home to thousands of species of coral and fish.

Earlier this month, a new major study predicted a "global collapse" of the populations of just about all seafood by 2048, if fishing around the world continues at its present pace.

Only about 200 to 300 fishing vessels, operated by Iceland, Russia and nine other nations, are estimated to use bottom trawling on the high seas. The other nations are Denmark, Estonia, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and Spain.

Bush said last month the United States would work to eliminate or better regulate practices such as bottom trawling, which devastate fish populations and the ocean floor. The U.S. allows but regulates bottom trawling in U.S. waters.

WWF 21 Nov 06
Plundering Europe's high seas

London, UK – The plundering of fish stocks in European high seas between the Azores and the Barent Sea, sadly goes on, said WWF at the end of an international fisheries meeting that failed to reduce catch quotas for many deepwater fish species.

After a week of negotiations at the annual meeting of the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), the international body that regulates fisheries in the high seas of the North East Atlantic Ocean, environmentalists expressed concern that recommendations were not adopted to stop the expansion of destructive deepwater fisheries, to close bottom trawling in two areas where fragile cold-water reefs are known to exist, and to end fishing of heavily depleted stocks of orange roughy.

“The results of the meeting are disappointing and highly irresponsible, especially as we face dramatic declines in fisheries worldwide and the high vulnerability of deep sea species and habitats to fishing,” said Christian Neumann of WWF-Germany.

On the first recommendation, the meeting refused to stop the expansion of deepwater fisheries into new areas for the protection of previously unfished stocks.

Delegates only agreed to reduce fishing activities by a token 5 per cent, or down to 65 per cent of the highest level ever observed since the fisheries were opened. In some cases this allows for fishing levels to actually increase from current ones, even though these are thought to be unsustainable.

A refusal by Russia, Norway, Denmark and Iceland to agree with a European Union proposal to close the coral rich south-west Rockall Bank led delegates to leave the area open for fishing, only agreeing to close several other proposed areas.

The entire set of areas had been recommended for closure by WWF and ICES, the scientific body advising NEAFC.

“Leaving known cold-water coral areas open to destructive fishing is a prostration to short-sighted economic interests,” Neumann added.

The Faroe Islands also refused to agree to a moratorium on fishing orange roughy, despite the unsustainability of harvesting this vulnerable deepwater species. Instead, only an interim suspension of the fishery was adopted and will be reviewed at an extraordinary meeting in June 2007.

Progress was made at the meeting, however, on IUU (illegal, unreported, unregulated) fisheries through the adoption of a more stringent control scheme.

Measures aiming at the conservation of sharks have also been agreed on, limiting the amount of shark fins onboard. “Although there was some overdue progress at this recent meeting, the results are a too little, too late,” said Neumann.

BBC 24 Nov 06
Ban on 'brutal' fishing blocked

United Nations negotiations on fisheries have ended without a global ban on trawling methods which destroy coral reefs and fish nurseries. Conservation groups and some governments had argued for a ban on bottom-trawling, which drags heavy nets and crushing rollers on the sea floor.

Negotiators could only agree on a limited set of precautionary measures.

Last month, leading scientists warned there would be no sea fish left in 50 years if current practices continued.

Negotiations at the UN in New York aimed to secure an agreement to go before the General Assembly next month.

Slow growth

Central to discussions was bottom-trawling, widely regarded as a destructive fishing practice. It targets slow-growing species such as orange roughy, which take decades to reach breeding age.

Such species are especially vulnerable to overfishing because the population replenishes itself very slowly.

For three years, conservation groups have been pushing for a UN moratorium on bottom-trawling; for the third year running, they have been disappointed. "We had been hoping the amazing creatures and habitats of the deep sea would get an early Christmas present this week," said Bryce Beukers-Stewart, fisheries policy officer with the Marine Conservation Society.

"But once again, short-term political and economic interests have over-ridden common sense."

Bottoming out

Eleven nations have bottom-trawling fleets, with Spain's being the biggest.

Studies have indicated that none would be commercially viable without government subsidies.

In 2004, a report compiled for the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and other environmental groups concluded that bottom-trawling was "...highly destructive to the biodiversity associated with seamounts and deep-sea coral ecosystems and... likely to pose significant risks to this biodiversity, including the risk of species extinction."

In the same year, 1,100 scientists put their names to a petition supporting the demand for a moratorium.

All this scientific evidence could not convince enough UN delegates that a moratorium was needed.

The eventual deal which goes forward to the General Assembly mandates governments to adopt unilateral "precautionary measures" to ensure their bottom-trawlers do not cause significant damage to marine ecosystems.

In areas covered by Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), "precautionary measures" must be established by the end of 2008.

"The final agreement has more loopholes in it than a fisherman's sweater," fumed Greenpeace oceans policy advisor Karen Sack.

Conservation groups accused Iceland in particular of blocking further protection. Iceland is already under fire from the conservation lobby over its recent decision to resume commercial whaling.

"The international community should be outraged that Iceland could almost single-handedly sink deep-sea protection and the food security of future generations," said Ms Sack.

Last month, an international team of scientists, having compiled a vast range of data from a wide variety of sources, warned that at current rates of depletion, there would be no viable populations of fish left in the seas by the middle of the century.
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