26/09/2005 — Life forms
we haven't even seen yet are under threat
by wasteful deep sea bottom trawling practices.
Every week the bottom trawling continues,
fragile environments we are just beginning
to understand are being wiped out. Demand
change now (and express yourself at the same
time) by creating your own deep sea life e-card.
We’ll help you send it to Ben Bradshaw and
Joe Borg, two men who have the opportunity
to champion the high seas at the UN General
Assembly and give our deep sea life a fighting
chance.
We are just starting to understand the complex
and mysterious ecosystems of the deep seas.
Ninety percent of the potential 10 million
deep sea species live in, on or just above
the sea floor. Often existing beyond the reach
of sunlight, many life forms are slow to grow
and mature. Eight-thousand-year-old cold-water
corals can rise up to 35 metres, providing
protection and spawning grounds for countless
organisms not yet seen by humans.
High seas bottom trawling targeting single
species can devastate entire ecosystems in
its wake. Nets the size of football pitches
drag up to 30 tonnes of trawl gear, ploughing
through approximately 12 square kilometres
of sea bed every 24 hours.
Nets are filled with bycatch -- coral, sponges,
crustaceans, undersized fish, fish of the
wrong species etc -- all dumped back into
the sea, dead or dying. Vulnerable environments
that took thousands of years to evolve can
be destroyed in a matter of hours.
The Greenpeace vessel Esperanza is currently
in Norwegian waters confronting destructive
and potentially illegal bottom trawlers. Check
out the ships blog to keep up with the action.
During our recent visit to the North Atlantic,
we observed 20 bottom trawlers in the international
waters 200 miles east of Canada over a three
week period.
An estimated 60 percent of destructive high
seas bottom trawling occurs in this area,
supposedly under the care of the Northwest
Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO).
"We witnessed example after example
of bad management, overfishing, and destruction
of deep sea life and habitat from heavy fishing
gear being dragged over the seabed. We saw
an indifference to the need to protect vulnerable
and fragile ecosystems as well as suspect
operators, such as the Lootus II, which are
linked to illegal fishing in other parts of
the globe," said Bunny McDiarmid, Greenpeace
International Oceans Campaigner.
Discussions with skippers aboard shrimp trawlers
revealed how they get around time limits set
on trawling by using bigger trawlers and up
to four nets at a time. Oh and unsurprisingly,
the skippers noticed the shrimp are getting
smaller.
"We want a UN moratorium on high seas
bottom trawling now," said McDiarmid.
"We need to force decision-makers to
sort out the mismanagement of deep sea fisheries
and to give scientists the necessary time
to identify which vulnerable areas need protection
from this destructive fishing practice"
she said.
Let’s show Ben Bradshaw -- of the UK Department
of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and
Joe Borg -- European Commissioner for Fisheries
and Maritime Affairs what we might be missing
out on.
