Earth Equity News

Shrugging Off Criticism, Europe Will Keep Trawling. By David Jolly, NYTimes, 12/3/10. “European nations will keep trawling the deep sea bottom… confounding hopes that they would honor commitments made to the United Nations General Assembly to stop the destructive practice. The Council of Fisheries Ministers, made up of officials from the 27 member nations of the European Union, said on Nov. 29 that there would be little change [PDF, 22 pp] in deep-sea quotas for the next two years, despite strong objections from the conservationist camp. Officials agreed to end deep-sea shark fishing and to restrict fishing for a handful of species, but in a victory for the French and Spanish fleets, fishing will continue largely as before. Deep-seas fisheries are defined as those below 200 meters, or about 650 feet. Deep-sea trolling and long-lining can lead to overfishing a stock, and dragging heavy nets across the bottom destroys coral and vegetation, disrupting the fragile ecosystem of the ocean floor. Making matters worse, deep-sea species tend to reproduce more slowly than species higher in the water column, so severely depleted stocks can face a tough road back to health even if significant conservation measures are eventually enacted… For a few commercial target species, thousands of tons of coral are hauled up only to be thrown back dead or dying, along with huge quantities of unwanted bycatch. In a matter of a few weeks or months, bottom trawl fishing can destroy what took many thousands of years to create.”