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Pacific in danger from bottom trawling
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Posted on Oct 23 2006
[B]NADI, Fiji Islands[/B]—Pacific marine ecosystems could be next in line for destruction if regional leaders do not agree to a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling, said Greenpeace.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific Oceans Team Leader Nilesh Goundar called on leaders to adopt a moratorium on HSBT at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting being held in Nadi, Fiji.
HSBT is on the agenda of the meeting and this most destructive fishing practice usually takes place on seamounts. This is a destructive fishing practice with enormous trawl nets. Some nets drag along the sea floor and can have mouths the length of a rugby field. Some are weighed across the bottom with heavy steel rollers that indiscriminately smash and crush corals, and swallow everything in their path.
The Pacific region is estimated to have 30,000-50,000 seamounts. “While commercial fishers do not yet target many seamounts in the Pacific, trends indicate an expansion in the high seas bottom trawl fishery,” Goundar said.
With the Pacific seamounts being mapped, Goundar said there is potential for expansion into this area in the near future.
Goundar said bottom trawlers can now reach down to 1,500 metres below the surface to trawl the ocean bottom.
“It is only a matter of time before technology is developed for them to reach beyond those depths to even deeper areas. Just because they cannot fish deeper than that today does not mean that they will be unable to do so tomorrow,” he said. [B][I](Greenpeace)[/I][/B]
