Press Release: LANDMARK AGREEMENT FIRST OF ITS KIND TO STOP DESTRUCTION FROM HIGH SEAS BOTTOM TRAWLING
INTRODUCTION
The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition joined The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) in order to help protect seamounts, cold-water corals and other vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems across the world's high seas. The DSCC is an alliance of over 20 international organisations, representing millions of people in countries around the world. Together we are calling on the United Nations General Assembly to secure a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling and to institute sustainable conservation and management regimes to ensure the long-term protection of these fragile and unique pockets of life in the deep seas before they are destroyed forever.
What does bottom trawling do? Click here to see the dramatic impacts of trawling - which can be seen from space.
A. DEEP SEAS IN CRISIS
Like Antarctica, the deep sea is one of the last unexplored wilderness frontiers left on the planet. Sixty-two percent of the earth's surface is covered in water over a kilometer deep. Under the water - and out of sight for most of us - are breathtaking landscapes of mountains, hills, ridges and troughs. Until very recently, it was assumed that there was little life in these cold and dark waters. Today we know the opposite is true - the deep seas are teeming with life and perhaps millions of species yet to be discovered.
Unfortunately, this incredible environment is already under threat - from a highly destructive fishing method known as bottom trawling. Bottom trawling denudes the targeted area of all living species and leaves the ocean floor habitat pulverized and lifeless, a 'clear-filled' landscape unable to support life for many years.
Mountains and corals under the Sea
Deep under the ocean, huge mountains soar hundreds of meters above the seafloor, in formations known as 'seamounts'. Although few have been properly explored or documented, scientists estimate that there are between 30,000 and 100,000 seamounts cross the world's oceans. Amazingly, the earth's longest mountain range is not on land but under the sea. The Mid-Oceanic Ridge winds around the globe from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic and is four times longer than the Andes, Rockies and Himalayas combined. There are many seamount formations in the Southern Ocean, including several concentrated on the Kerguelen Plateau.
Mysteries of deep sea life
The nutrient-rich waters around seamounts support extraordinary and diverse ecosystems. The hard surfaces are colonized by 'ancient forests' of cold water corals, sponges and seawhips, all havens for more mobile animals such as fish, sea spiders, whelks, octopus, crabs and other crustaceans. Worms, clams and shells live in the sediments. Some of the corals are thousands of years old, several storeys high and with trunks as thick as lamp posts. Many seamount-dwelling species are believed to be endemic to only one or two seamounts and not yet discovered or categorized.
These areas are critical to the health of the ocean because they provide habitat for many commercially and ecologically important species, and appear to be as important to the biodiversity of the oceans and sustainability of fisheries as their equivalent in shallow tropical seas.
B. MASS DESTRUCTION: BOTTOM TRAWLING
Bottom trawling
The concentrated populations of commercial fish species around seamounts make these deep water ecosystems rich pickings for the industrial fishing industry. Bottom trawling involves dragging huge, heavy nets along the sea floor. Large metal plates and rubber wheels attached to these nets move along the bottom and crush nearly everything in their path.
Studies by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition suggest that that damage to deepwater coral communities have been observed off both coasts of North America, off Europe from Scandinavia to northern Spain, and on seamounts near Australia and New Zealand. In Norwegian waters, between one-third and one-half of the deepwater reefs have been damaged or destroyed by trawling. On the South Tasman Rise south of Australia, observers recorded trawlers bringing up an average of 1.6 tons of coral per hour in their nets in 1997 - the first year of the area's orange roughy seamount fishery. In total 10,000 tons of coral - and 4,000 tons of the target species orange roughy - were brought up in the nets of the 20 deep-sea trawlers working in the area that year (http://www.saveourseas.org/publicdocs/English_Fundamental.pdf)
All evidence indicates that deep water life forms are very slow to recover from such damage, decades to hundreds of years, if they recover at all.
The Culprits
There are estimated to be 100-200 fishing vessels currently operating full-time and year-round bottom trawling on the high seas, and a further few hundred part-time vessels. Only 11 nations take over 95 percent of high seas catch, the three biggest being Spain, Russia and New Zealand. The catch is primarily sold to the European Union, United States and Japanese markets.
The destruction caused by high seas bottom trawling is completely disproportionate to its economic importance - less than 0.5 percent of the worldwide fish catch. However we can expect the devastation to continue at an accelerated rate - as national Exclusive Economic Zones are fished out , more nations will move to the high seas - and as targeted high seas seamounts are rapidly depleted, to new areas of the high seas.oles: the regulation
C. THE VIEW OF THE SCIENTISTS
In early 2004, 1,136 scientists called for an international halt on high seas bottom trawling:
"As marine scientists and conservation biologists, we are profoundly concerned that human activities, particularly bottom trawling, are causing unprecedented damage to the deep-sea coral and sponge communities on continental plateaus and slopes, and on seamounts and mid-ocean ridges….
It is not too late to save most of the world's deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems…. We urge the United Nations and appropriate international bodies to establish a moratorium on bottom trawling on the High Seas. Similarly, we urge individual nations and states to ban bottom trawling to protect deep-sea ecosystems wherever coral forests and reefs are known to occur within their Exclusive Economic Zones. "
At the 2004 Convention on Biological Diversity, member states called the UN and other international bodies to 'urgently take the short-term, medium-term and long-term measures to eliminate/avoid destructive practices, consistent with international law, on a scientific basis, including the application of precaution. In particular, the CBD asked the UN to assess the extent of deep sea biodiversity and ecosystems, including populations of fish species and their vulnerability to deep sea fishing on the high seas; and to develop and implement legally binding regimes to protect deep sea biodiversity in the long term, and to conserve and sustainably manage the bottom fisheries on the high seas". (Read more at http://www.biodiv.org/doc/meetings/cop/cop-07/information/cop-07-inf-35-en.pdf)
D. THE SOLUTION
Moratorium
Deep sea seamounts and cold water coral habitats represent preferred, perhaps even essential, fish habitats, as well as biodiversity hotspots. Scientists say that we need to apply the precautionary principle to fisheries management until we have considerably more knowledge and understanding of these habitats. As part of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition the Antarctic and Southern Coalition is campaigning for an immediate halt to bottom trawling in the world's high seas. If allowed to continue, the bottom trawlers will destroy deep sea species before we have even discovered what is down there.
ASOC is calling on the United Nations General Assembly to 'adopt a resolution declaring an immediate moratorium on high seas bottom trawling and to simultaneously initiate a process under the auspices of the UN General Assembly'.
After considerable discussion, the November 2005 United Nations General Assembly called on its members to further investigate the problem and to report back in two years. Unfortunately this will be too little, too slow for many seamounts and thousands of species.
And several nations have advocated the extension of regional management bodies as the most effective way forward. There are currently around 30 regional fisheries bodies but most of those covering the high seas have limited authority and coverage, and none have comprehensive measures to regulate bottom trawl fisheries for their impacts on deep-sea species on the high seas.
Establishing a comprehensive system of RFMOs, that regulate bottom fisheries, cover all areas, draw from the experiences and existing measures within the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), and adequate address the issue of illegal and unreported fishing activity, could be a very useful long-term approach for sustainable management and protection of vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems.
In the meantime, urgent United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) action is required to protect deep-sea species and ecosystems and the interests of the international community as a whole from the most immediate threat to deep-sea biodiversity at hand - bottom trawl fishing on the high seas.
E. CCAMLR and HIGH SEAS BOTTOM TRAWLING
While there are few nations undertaking bottom trawling activities at present, there is considerable interest in expanding such fishing practices in various areas of the CCAMLR areas. The precautionary approach embedded in the CAMLR Convention supports a restriction on bottom trawling activities within CCAMLR until sufficient information is available to make a better assessment of the longer term impacts of such activities.
ASOC urged CCAMLR at its 2004 meeting to recognize the calls from the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations General Assembly for urgent action to protect vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems. Specifically we recommended consideration of a moratorium on bottom-trawl fishing in the CCAMLR Area until the Scientific Committee has had the opportunity to assess the extent of vulnerable biodiversity and ecosystems within the CCAMLR Convention Area, and the Commission has developed measures that facilitate the effective precautionary and ecosystem management of such areas. Click here for ASOC's Seamounts Paper. (.pdf)
F. TAKE ACTION
Send a fax, letter or e-mail to your Fisheries Minister, asking them to ensure that the seabed is protected from destructive fishing gear such as bottom trawling - and to support a UN moratorium on high seas bottom trawling
Help get the message out by downloading the posters at the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition website at http://www.savethehighseas.org/action.cfm and post them at your workplace, community notice board or school.
Check out the action activities of other DSCC members at the same website.
G. PHOTO GALLERY
For fantastic pictures of deep-sea habitats, corals and strange and wonderful creatures both BEFORE and AFTER the impacts of bottom trawling, visit the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition's photo gallery at
http://www.savethehighseas.org/photo_gallery.cfm
H. ABOUT THE DEEP SEA CONSERVATION COALITION
The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition is an alliance of over 20 international organisations, representing millions of people in countries around the world, and working together to protect seamounts, cold-water corals and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition is calling on the United Nations General Assembly to secure a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling to protect these fragile and unique pockets of life in the deep seas before they are destroyed forever.
For further information about the Coalition, including a detailed position statement
www.savethehighseas.org
For details about other Deep Sea Conservation Coalition members, visit http://www.savethehighseas.org/about.cfm