NAFO wakes up to deep sea destruction
Last time I was on the Esperanza we were on the Grand Banks off the coast of Nova Scotia, exposing the destruction of bottom trawling in 2005. We were asking the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) to wake up and start protecting deep sea life.
Well guess what! Yesterday they reached a groundbreaking agreement in Montreal and adopted a blueprint for action to protect the high seas from bottom trawling. NAFO members include Canada, the European Union, Norway, Iceland, Russia and the US.
The agreement reached will implement a United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted in 2006, which called for urgent action to protect deep-sea corals and other vulnerable ecosystems from the impacts of bottom fishing in international waters. NAFO has now agreed that all high seas bottom fishing will be subject to impact assessments by the end of 2008, and that fishing areas should be closed or fisheries prohibited where damage to corals, sponges and other deep sea species cannot be prevented.
Given that more high seas trawling takes place in the NAFO area than in any other area controlled by a fisheries management organisation this is a truly fantastic achievement and a significant step forward in a global shift towards more sustainable fishing practices.
Having worked on the campaign to help bring about this kind of change and now being back on the Esperanza when this news came through - I am simply overjoyed! Here we are, working again on an other campaign to defend the oceans and sometimes it can feel like the problems are insurmountable and it's often hard to see any light at the end of this tunnel. It's great to see that NAFO has lit a beacon in the darkness!
Follow Greenpeace »
