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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0219-03.htm

Published on Wednesday, February 19, 2003 by the Environmental News Service
Destructive Fishing Causing Ocean Crisis
by Cat Lazaroff

DENVER, Colorado - Some of the most productive marine fishing methods
are also the most damaging, and should be restricted or banned, scientists
argued at a scientific meeting this week. More than 400 leading scientists
called Tuesday for the United Nations to issue a moratorium on longline and
gillnet fishing, methods they say are wiping out populations of fish, turtles,
marine mammals and other species in the Pacific Ocean.

In a full page ad which ran in Tuesday's "New York Times," the researchers
urged a ban on industrial fishing techniques including longlining and gillnetting,
which they blamed for the plight of the endangered Pacific leatherback turtle and
other rare species.

The call to halt these wasteful fishing methods was made at the annual American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference being held in Denver,
and in advance of the international Food and Agriculture Organization Committee
on Fisheries meeting next week in Rome.

A total of 405 scientists from 47 nations - along with 100 conservation, animal
welfare and other nonprofit groups - signed open letters to the United Nations,
urging governments and fisheries managers in the United States and abroad to heed
the worsening crisis of global fisheries.

"In recent decades the impact of commercial fishing on ocean ecosystems has
dramatically increased, and we are confronted with the unprecedented reality
that we are rapidly depleting the oceans' resources," states the letter printed
in the "New York Times." "The oceans, once mistakenly thought to be inexhaustible,
clearly are not."

The letter points out that more than 70 percent of global fish populations
are now considered overfished or on the brink of being overfished, according
to United Nations figures. Not just fish are at risk: "indiscriminate commercial
fishing practices wastefully harm and kill millions of non-targeted animals
per year, causing unsustainable mortality to sea turtles, sea birds, bluefin
tuna, swordfish and sharks," the letter states.

Leatherback Turtle May Face Extinction

Among the marine species most threatened by longlining and gill netting
is the Pacific leatherback sea turtle, the scientists wrote.

"Tragic declines of leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles have been well
documented in the Pacific," said Dr. Larry Crowder, Duke University Marine
Laboratory researcher, "and the impact of longline fishing on these and other
marine species can't be understated."

This year's return of nesting leatherbacks to Pacific beaches was the
worst on record, biologists report. Scientists estimate that there are
now less than 5,000 nesting female leatherbacks left in the Pacific Ocean
- down from 91,000 in 1980, a decline of 95 percent.

"The decline of the leatherback in the last five years is nothing short of
catastrophic, and it is imperative that the global community come together
to eliminate the use of the most destructive forms of industrial fishing
before it is too late." said Dr. Sylvia Earle, a marine expert and explorer
in residence at the National Geographic Society.

A recent report to the Pew Charitable Trusts estimates that there are almost
two billion hooks set per year by the longline fishing fleet. Longline fishing
in all the world's deep oceans kills some 40,000 sea turtles each year, along
with 300,000 seabirds and millions of sharks.

"The United Nations and Kofi Annan must recognize that in order to save the
endangered leatherbacks, as well as imperiled sharks, seabirds and dolphins,
we must stop these weapons of mass destruction from destroying our oceans,"
said Todd Steiner, director of the Turtle Island Restoration Network.
"There are just too many hooks adrift in the Pacific to give the leatherback
a fighting chance for survival."

Next week, fisheries managers from around the world will gather in Rome,
Italy for the 25th session of the United Nations' Food and Agricultural
Organization's Committee on Fisheries meeting. Scientists and environmental
organizations are pressing these officials to place a moratorium on both
longlining and gillnetting in the Pacific, just as the United Nations passed
a comprehensive global ban of driftnet fishing in the early 1990s.

The United States has already taken some steps to protect embattled marine
species by closing the West Coast to longlining altogether and restricting
the Hawaii longlining fleet from fishing for swordfish. After a legal challenge
by the Turtle Island Restoration Network, the National Marine Fisheries Service
applied time and area closures for gillnet fishing fleets off the West Coast.

Bottom Trawling Called Worst of All

Another damaging fishing method which conservation groups hope to see restricted
is bottom trawling, a common method to catch shrimp, fish, and other bottom dwelling
sea life. Research presented Sunday at the AAAS meeting shows that despite frequent
conflict over fisheries issues, many fishers, conservationists and academics agree
that bottom trawling is the most ecologically damaging fishing gear.

The scientists presented findings that, for the first time, document and rank the
full suite of ecological impacts associated with all commercial fishing gears used
in the United States. Scientists urged managers, fishers and environmentalists to
recognize that how fishing is carried out may be as important to the future of marine
resources as how many fish are caught.

Though scientific data now demonstrates the collapse of fisheries around the world,
many destructive fishing practices are still carried out, largely out of sight of the
public and, hence, out of mind. Almost one quarter of the world's catch is thrown back
into the sea dead or dying each year because the fishing gear cannot discriminate
between target catch and other animals that are undersized, unmarketable, or not
worth the price of bringing to shore.

About 2.3 billion pounds of sea life were discarded in the U.S. in 2000 alone,
and thousands of the ocean's most charismatic species - including sea turtles,
marine mammals, sharks and seabirds - are killed each year by fishing nets, lines
and hooks. These deaths have implications for both marine populations and marine
food webs.

"Considering the documented decline in global fisheries, this kind of waste is
unacceptable. But because this travesty is unseen by most people, it continues,"
said Dr. Crowder.

Experts agree that bottom trawls are one of the worst offenders, entrapping vast
numbers of non-targeted animals.

"The first time I was on a trawler, I was appalled to see that for every pound of
shrimp caught there were 20 pounds of sharks, rays, crabs, and starfish killed.
The shrimpers called this bycatch 'trawl trash' - I call it 'biodiversity',"
noted Elliott Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. "Of course
I recognize in some trawls it could be only one pound - in others 100 pounds
for every pound of shrimp."

This bycatch is not the only collateral damage associated with fishing. Many
experts agreed that habitat destruction that some fishing gears cause is even
more ecologically damaging than the harm caused by bycatch.

"On land we can see how animals rely on structure, how the trees of a forest
are important breeding, feeding, and hiding places - but in the ocean we have
to prove it from afar," explained James Lindholm of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"We now know that structures on the seafloor are critical for the future of
cod, rockfish, and other commercially important species. But it's only in the
last 15 years that we've had the technology to see these habitats, to see that
the seafloor is not just an endless flat expanse, and to begin to understand
how we are altering deep sea marine habitats - and fisheries - across the globe."

In many cases, fishing is destroying undersea habitats before scientists even
have a chance to study them.

The way we fish is like hanging a huge net dragged from an blimp across a forest, knocking down the trees and scooping up the plants and animals, and then throwing away everything except the deer," says Norse.

The destruction of deep sea, coldwater corals off the east and west coasts of
the U.S. is one example. Hundreds or thousands of years old, these living corals
can be destroyed with a single pass of a bottom trawl, and may take decades
to recover, if they ever do.

"The damage to our ocean floors is more extensive and perhaps even worse than
tropical deforestation," Norse said. "We must bring these issues to the forefront
of fisheries management before it is too late."

Gear Changes Could Save Species

New work presented by Lance Morgan of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute
synthesized data on the ecological impacts of the 10 major commercial fishing gears
used in the United States and provides an expert ranking for each gear type. The
overall ecological impacts associated with bottom trawls, bottom gillnets, dredges
and midwater or drift gillnets ranked relatively high, with bottom trawling topping
the list as the most ecologically harmful gear type.

The impacts from hook and line fishing, purse seines and midwater trawls ranked
relatively low on the scale, though these methods are also known to snag unintended
species including dolphins, sea turtles and seabirds.

"This is the first study to synthesize the science on these issues, but also to use
social science methods to incorporate expert judgments. It gives managers a place
to start in their deliberations concerning the relative levels of bycatch and
habitat impacts from different fishing methods," said coauthor Ratana Chuenpagdee
of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

"When you present knowledgeable experts - fishermen, conservationists, and
academics - with science based information about gear impacts, and ask them
to compare these collateral damages without knowing the names of the gear involved,
they give surprisingly consistent answers," Chuenpagdee added. "It's unusual to
find such uniform agreement about anything, much less fishing practices. But when
you take out personal bias linked to particular gears, there is surprising consensus
across these different communities."

The authors hope that their findings will stimulate local, regional, national and
international conversations about how to reduce the collateral impacts of fishing.

"Too often this problem has been overlooked or ignored because of the lack of
comparative measures. Our results indicate that there is more common starting
ground on these issues than people have thought," said Chuenpagdee.

The scientists stressed that in many cases, there are ways to reduce the impacts
of fishing, but noted that change will require political will and action. They
suggest that managers and fishers consider "shifting gears" - phasing out or
modifying destructive gears, and moving fisheries toward more environmentally
friendly options.

Gear innovations, such as turtle exclude devices (TEDs) and streamers on longlines
to scare away seabirds, have reduced bycatch in some fisheries, but propagation of
these "gear fixes," through the global fishery has been slow, and in some cases
governments have failed to fully implement or enforce the use of even proven
technologies.

"Often the best solutions stem from fishermen themselves, but without political
or financial incentive to promote development and use of 'gear fixes' or new
operating procedures, destructive practices will continue," said Morgan.

Spatial management, where the use of certain gears is prohibited in sensitive
habitats or popular breeding or feeding grounds of at risk species, is another
option. But in the end, some gears may have to go.

"We need to think about restructuring fisheries around not using trawlers.
Trawling has to be curtailed and phased out as a way of interacting with the
environment - it is just too destructive," argued Daniel Pauly, University of
British Columbia, a fisheries biologist.

"As a society, we make these types of judgments all the time - we don't have
to do everything that we can do, in fact we have rules of restraint to prevent
damage - we don't allow people to drive over the speed limit just to get somewhere
faster, we don't allow machine guns to hunt deer, and we need not allow wasteful
destruction of our marine resources."

Several U.S. states, including California, Alaska, Florida and Virginia, already
have regulations limiting the use of bottom trawls. The scientists hope that this
innovative approach to evaluating fishing gears and incorporating judgments by
various interest groups will be applied in all areas, catalyzing new attention
and action to reduce the bycatch and habitat destruction across fishing gear types.

"I eat fish that commercial fishers catch, I favor a strong fishing industry.
But I also know that the way people fish is destructive and undermines the future
of fisheries and fishermen alike," said Norse.

"If we are going to have fish and sea turtles and seabirds and marine mammals
in the future, we have to fish in way that dramatically reduces the collateral
impact of commercial fishing operations. With all the knowledge and creativity
of fishermen and scientists, we can fish better. We can, and we must - for the
future of the oceans and the sustainability of fisheries," Norse concluded.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003

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