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A Greenpeace activist holds a dead ghost shark discarded by a deep sea trawler in the Tasman Sea. Bottom trawling destroys a vast amount of marine life.
Enlarge imageThe meeting was called to regulate fishing in the South Pacific. Last year's Pacific Islands Forum passed a declaration seeking a ban on the destructive practice of bottom trawling in our high seas areas.
Commitments were made at the UN General Assembly in 2006 to protect the biodiversity of the deep sea from bottom trawling. Can the politicians can actually deliver what they promised?
Will the South Pacific fisheries agreement deliver protection for the high seas?
We certainly hope so. The governments of the South Pacific, plus those of countries wanting to take advantage of one of the last high seas fisheries frontiers, are meeting to form a new fisheries management organisation.
Given the perilous state of global fish stocks, this agreement has special significance. It can't be solely about dividing up the ocean wealth: it needs to protect the ocean's health.
Populations of top predators, a key indicator of an ecosystem's stability, are disappearing at a frightening rate. 90 per cent of the large fish that many of us love to eat (tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, halibut, skate, and flounder) have been fished out since large scale industrial fishing began in the 1950s.The depletion of these top predator species can cause a shift in entire oceans ecosystems where commercially valuable fish are replaced by smaller, plankton-feeding fish. This century may even see bumper crops of jellyfish replacing the fish consumed by humans.
Photo by Gavin Newman
Politicians and officials agree that they need to do better to ensure not only the protection of the fish stocks but also the diverse marine ecosystem on which they depend.
Time for action
For three years, Greenpeace has worked with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and its 60 member organisations to get a global moratorium on the destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling in the high seas. Rather than agreeing to the moratorium, in October 2006, all governments agreed to a United Nations General Assembly resolution.
Current scientific information shows that we don't know enough about deep sea ecosystems to adequately protect them. It is estimated that between half a million and five million deep sea species are as yet undiscovered. We know more about Mars than we do our own deep sea environment.
The only genuinely precautionary approach is to close areas where these vulnerable ecosystems occur, or are likely to occur, until adequate scientific assessments have been carried out, and effective conservation and management measures implemented.
For fisheries agreements under development - like the one in the South Pacific - the deadline to implement these measures to protect deep sea ecosystems is December 2007. Here and now is the time for these governments to put in place the commitments they made in December 2006.
This meeting must not just be about countries carving up the pie, each making sure they get a big enough slice. The agreement must include measures that will ensure not only the sustainability of the fish stocks but also protection of our deep sea marine environment.
