Source: NZ Herald
Leading environmental organisations and recreational fishers have joined forces to call on the government to restrict bottom trawling.
Continue reading Forces joined in battle against bottom trawling
21 May, 2019
bottom trawling
11 April, 2019
Source: World Economic Forum
Author: Johnny Wood
The total number of animals has halved since the 1970s in what some scientists have termed the start of Earth’s sixth mass extinction.
Seismic eruptions, ice ages, continental collision and asteroid impact are thought to be some of the causes of the previous five mass extinctions. This time though, humans are to blame. Never before has a single species exerted such influence on the planet and the evolution of its inhabitants, or put its own survival in such jeopardy.
Continue reading 3 reasons we should all care about biodiversity
3 April, 2019
Source: Science
Author: Alex Fox
No flag can claim the high seas, but many nations exploit them. As a result, life in the two-thirds of the oceans beyond any country’s territorial waters faces many threats that are largely unregulated, including overfishing and the emerging deep-sea mining industry.
Continue reading First ever high-seas conservation treaty would protect life in international waters
8 March, 2019
Source: iPolitics
Author: Holly Lake
The waters off the coast of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula are part of Canada’s newest marine protected area (MPA). Official protection of the area has been a long time coming, with efforts to have the peninsula designated having started in 2011. This week, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made it official.
Continue reading ‘Crown jewel’ of the Gulf of St. Lawrence part of new marine protected area
8 March, 2019
Source: Radio Canada International
Author: Lynn Desjardins
The Canadian government will create new marine refuges off the western coast that will protect some ancient and fragile glass sponge reefs. The charity, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), “is very pleased” that this “ecological treasure” not far from Vancouver will be protected from all bottom-contact fishing. CPAWS and other groups have worked hard to study and secure protection of the reefs.
Continue reading Charity applauds glass sponge reef protection
8 March, 2019
Source: Newshub
Author: Isobel Ewing
Orange Roughy 900 metres deep have been captured by scientists’ cameras on the Chatham Rise, but overfishing pushed the slow-growing species to the brink. New evidence shows its habitat may be heading the same way.
Continue reading Deep-sea trawling taking a toll on certain species and their habitats
7 March, 2019
Source: Stuff.co.nz
Author: Charlie Mitchell
Trawlers hunting for fish in the dark, cold depths of the sea may be doing irreversible damage to vast coral reefs on the seafloor.
Findings from New Zealand researchers have some environmentalists pushing for a ban on bottom trawling, the primary method of catching deep sea fish, likening its impact on seabed wildlife to the destruction of kauri forests.
Continue reading Bottom trawling for fish causing ‘permanent damage’ to deep sea forest
5 March, 2019
Source: Fstoppers
Author: Jennifer Tallerico
The devastating effects of bottom trawlers lead one activist and photographer to create a campaign to drive emotional messages through their imagery.
Continue reading Underwater Photography to Take a Powerful Stand Against Trawling
6 February, 2019
Source: Phys.Org
A recent paper on the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in northern Europe (“Elevated trawling inside protected areas undermines conservation outcomes in a global fishing hot spot”) reveals that industrial-scale fishing – primarily the use of bottom-trawl fishing – is widespread in so-called protected areas that were established specifically to safeguard highly biodiverse marine and coastal habitats across the North Sea. We welcome this important and timely piece of research. Unfortunately, a number of the press reports that covered this paper’s findings included sensationalist – and misleading – headlines that are potentially very damaging to the cause of marine conservation.
Continue reading When is a Marine Protected Area not a Marine Protected Area?
28 January, 2019
The Annual Meeting of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) today adopted a measure (regulation) for managing deep-sea fisheries on the high seas of the South Pacific. The regulation will allow New Zealand vessels to continue deep-sea bottom trawling on biodiversity hotspots on seamounts and deep mountain ridge systems on the high seas, putting large percentages of deepwater corals, related ecosystems, and rare species at risk in the Southwest Pacific and Tasman Sea.
At the same time, the meeting reviewed the activities of a New Zealand vessel, the Amaltal Apollo, caught repeatedly bottom trawling last year in an area closed by SPRFMO to protect deepwater corals. Pending the outcome of prosecution against the captain and company, scheduled to begin in February in Nelson, the SPRFMO meeting decided to keep the vessel on a draft list of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing vessels. New Zealand trawl vessels have dragged up many tonnes of corals and other vulnerable deep-sea habitat forming species over the past ten years of deep-sea fishing on seamounts on the high seas according to a report provided to SPRFMO by New Zealand in September of last year.
The United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly called on States and regional fisheries treaty organisations, such as SPRFMO, to prevent bottom trawl fishing in sensitive habitats and other areas of deep-sea biodiversity or else prohibit bottom trawl fishing. The UN’s 1st World Ocean Assessment in 2016, in reviewing the status of seamounts worldwide, expressed concern that “deepwater trawling has caused severe, widespread, long-term destruction of these environments globally”.
“We are very disappointed that SPRFMO member countries were convinced by New Zealand and Australia to adopt a deeply flawed regulation that will allow continued degradation and destruction of biologically rich and diverse ecosystems in the deep-sea from the Louisville Ridge in the western central South Pacific all the way across to the Tasman Sea” said Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition who attended the meeting. “And all of this to provide fishing opportunities for a handful of New Zealand bottom trawl vessels to catch 1,500 tonnes of orange roughy, a long-lived species of fish highly vulnerable to overfishing, on the high seas. This runs completely counter to resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly since 2006 and global negotiations to conserve and protect marine biodiversity in the international waters of the world’s oceans.”
As a result of concerns expressed by the European Union, the regulation will be reviewed by the next meeting of SPRFMO’s Scientific Committee to determine whether in fact it does provide protection to deep-sea biodiversity. “We are urging SPRFMO member countries to scrutinize this regulation much more carefully than they have done this week and ensure that at the next meeting of SPRFMO it is amended to ensure the protection of biologically rich and diverse deep-sea ecosystems”.
For further information contact:
Matthew Gianni, DSCC: +31 646 168 899
Duncan Currie, DSCC: +31 622 582 374
Note to editors:
UN 1st World Ocean Assessment, 2016. Chapter 51. Biological Communities on Seamounts and Other Submarine Features Potentially Threatened by Disturbance (page 15).
Download the press release
image © Mike Markovina