PRESS CONFERENCE ON DEEPSEA BOTTOM TRAWLING

Deep sea bottom trawl fishing was a highly unregulated and extremely destructive practice that could be compared to chasing rabbits with a bulldozer, Lisa Speer, Senior Policy Analyst, National Resource Defence Council, told correspondents this morning during a Headquarters press conference.

Callum Roberts, Professor in Marine Conservation and Biology, Environment Department, University of York (United Kingdom), and Karen Sack, Oceans Policy Advisor, Greenpeace International, also participated in the press conference, which was sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Ms. Speer, speaking on behalf of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said that bottom trawling involved dragging huge, weighted nets along the ocean floor and had a devastating effect on sensitive deep sea ecosystems, which represented the “last frontier” of conservation.  The Coalition, consisting of 50 membership organizations around the world, had joined together with 1,100 scientists to call for a temporary “time out”, a moratorium, on deep sea bottom trawling, so that a legal regulatory regime could be developed.

For the last three years, she added, the General Assembly had called for urgent action to address the impact of bottom trawling.  “It is time now for nations to stop talking and start acting”, she said.  “It is time to shift from words to action and to preserve the precious ocean resources that belong to all of humankind.”

Using “before” and “after” slides, Mr. Roberts illustrated the destructive impact of deep sea trawling on the “delicate and fragile” organisms living on slopes of sea mounts and in cold water coral reefs.  He said 62 per cent of the Earth was covered by deep sea (more than 1,000 metres deep).  The deep sea habitat was only now being explored by scientists, and incredible life forms were being found.  Sea mounts were complex communities of corals, sea fans and anemones.  As scientists were discovering the life in the deep seas, they also found that 30 to 50 per cent of such habitats had been destroyed by destructive fishing practices, he said, comparing the experience to that of Egyptologists discovering robbed graves.

As deep sea organisms grew slowly and lived long, the sustainable fish catch that could be taken from the deep seas was very small, he said.  Deep sea fisheries, developed only over the last 40 years, had been pursued in a manner of “serial depletion”, as trawlers moved from one area to another, destroying the habitat in an unsustainable manner.  “There is probably no such thing as a deep sea fishery that is both sustainable and economically viable”, he said, adding that once destroyed, there was no possibility of recovery.

It was important to act now to stop bottom trawling and to protect sensitive areas of the deep sea, Mr. Roberts said.  Life forms that were more than a thousand years old were being removed.  Those organisms could be of vital importance to humanity, as they could hold records of the earth’s development and climate.  That was why scientists of the world were united in the view that high seas bottom trawling must be stopped.  Fragile ecosystems, the “heritage of humanity”, were being destroyed today by a very small industry.

Ms. Sack read a message from Carmen Gravatz, Greenpeace Ocean Campaigner, written aboard the “Rainbow Warrior”, which currently followed bottom trawlers in international waters between Australia and New Zealand.  According to Ms. Gravatz, Australia and New Zealand had been talking for 15 years about establishing a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) while bottom trawling continued to destroy the unique deep sea life.  “It’s a real pity that the folks at the UN talking about these issues can’t be here to see the destruction for themselves”, Ms. Gravatz wrote.

According to Ms. Gravatz, bottom trawling caused “phenomenal waste and destruction” due to its indiscriminate method, by which anything on the sea floor ended up in the nets.  Yesterday, she wrote, Greenpeace activists had attached an inflatable life-raft to a trawler’s net, preventing the net from sinking to the sea floor.  (Ms. Sack added that the activists had been shot at by a high-pressure water canon and a high-velocity gun shooting potatoes.)

Seeing the variety of life being dragged up dead in trawling nets made it impossible to understand why States at the United Nations had not yet acted to establish a moratorium on high-seas bottom trawling, Ms. Gravatz wrote.  Such a moratorium would ensure that deep sea biodiversity was protected whilst it could be properly assessed and a RFMO could be established that could comprehensively and effective conserve and manage that marine environment.

Answering a correspondent’s question, Ms. Speer said that over the last months, there had been a substantial shift in the positions of States regarding a moratorium.  The early leadership of Costa Rica and Palau in that regard had been joined by countries such as Chile, Norway and Mexico.  Even the European Union had started to shift towards support for a moratorium.  Unfortunately, the European Union was bound by the Common Fisheries Policy, and Spain was blocking a common position.  The United States and Australia had shown no leadership whatsoever in the matter.

Ms. Sack added that States started to recognize that the destruction of biodiversity of the deep presented a challenge, namely: “Stop talking, start doing”.  Noting that tomorrow was World’s Oceans Day, she hoped that action could be taken.  She said that the September summit would address the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.  The Millennium Ecosystem Task Force, established by the Secretary-General, had submitted a report that recommended, among other things, a ban on bottom trawling on the high seas by 2006 and across the world by 2010 -- a stronger demand than even that of Greenpeace.

Asked about public support for change in countries’ policies, Ms. Sack said that member organizations of the Deep Sea Coalition throughout the world were ensuring that the voices of the citizens that voted politicians into power were being heard.  Last year, for example, Greenpeace Germany had organized a campaign whereby over 100,000 postcards had been sent to the United Nations Secretary-General calling for a moratorium on deep sea bottom trawling. 

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