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The Long-Awaited Secretary General’s Report Confirms the In mid-July, the UN Secretary General issued its report on measures taken to protect the vulnerable deep ecosystems of the high seas. The report confirms that the ‘urgent measures’ called for by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) for the last several years have not yet been taken. The pressure to declare a global moratorium on high seas bottom trawling continues to grow. The Secretary General’s report stems from a request by the General Assembly in 2004 and is based on member States’ own submissions outlining what they have done individually and as members of Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs), to halt destructive fishing practices – including bottom trawling – on the high seas. It concludes that: "Some States have undertaken, or are in the process of undertaking extensive efforts to protect some fishery habitat areas within their national jurisdiction, in particular through the establishment of protected areas. However, this is not the case in the high seas, though deep sea habitats in these areas are extremely vulnerable and require protection." It also notes that “many fisheries are not managed until they are overexploited and clearly depleted and, because of the high vulnerability of deep-sea species to exploitation and their low potential for recovery, this is of particular concern for these stocks. This raises the question of the urgent need for interim measures in particular circumstances, pending the adoption of conservation and management regimes.” The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition responded that “it's taken two years for this report to confirm what everyone knew already, that there are no comprehensive measures to protect the most vulnerable areas of the high seas. There is now no excuse for not taking the only step which can halt this uncontrolled destruction. The General Assembly must declare a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling when it meets in November." Voluntary Closures Aren’t Enough Recent proposals by industry to voluntarily close areas to bottom trawling have been extensively reported in the press. Conservation organisations are concerned that without an independent scientific assessment, industry proposals may simply consist of closing areas which have already been fished out, are inaccessible, or where there is little fish of value in the first place. The New Zealand industry proposal last February to voluntarily close approximately 30% of the NZ EEZ (with extensions into the high seas), is a case in point. It turns out that most areas proposed for closure are either too deep or too rough to bottom trawl, or are otherwise of no interest to the fishing industry because they don't have enough bottom-trawlable target fish, such as orange roughy, to be economical as fishing areas. See Map A report by NZ’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) says that under the proposal “protection for endemic species protection would be very low” and "…despite their large geographic area, the focus of this proposal on existing areas that have both very low fishing value and low fish diversity, makes it a poor option for the long-term protection of demersal fish diversity in New Zealand's EEZ." Likewise, the Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI) has just produced an analysis and map of an industry proposal to voluntary close areas in the South Indian Ocean. MCBI concludes that “the proposed BPAs [benthic protected areas] contain 15 fishable seamounts, which is 6% of the total fishable seamounts within the map extent.” Without an independent scientific assessment of the entire area, it is impossible to determine whether there are other sites equally or more in need of protection than those selected by industry. As has been noted by ICES, closing a limited number of areas may simply divert fishing effort to other (potentially even more) vulnerable areas. Written by: Kelly Rigg |
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