February 11, 2006
Making the unseen seen
One of the reasons were here in Wellington ahead of the RFMO meeting is to help make the unseen seen. Not only is the deep sea a largely unseen world but often these high level governmental policy meetings are also murky affairs that, for the most part, go unnoticed by anyone but the policy heads and bureaucrats.
With our deep sea creature galleries and sculpture displays we hope to show people something of the wonders of the deep that are under threat; but also, over the coming week, we want to shed some light on the intricacies of the Regional Fisheries Management Organisation and the meeting at which they have the chance to afford deep-sea life the protection it so urgently needs.
So to begin, the map above shows the area of international waters under discussion at the meeting. Basically, its the South Pacific Ocean, the Tasman Sea and that bit below Australia - everywhere that doesnt fall under the jurisdiction of the surrounding countries exclusive economic zones (EEZ).
Bottom trawling companies have been exploiting the fact that there are virtually no rules about fishing in these areas for decades.
We were given a rare insight into the level of destruction in the 1997-98 fishing year when fisheries observers on board bottom trawling vessels collected data about what was coming up in the nets. That year 4,000 tonnes of orange roughy were caught and over 10,000 tonnes of ancient deep-sea corals! It really is like picking apples with a bulldozer.
Many in the fishing industry have strongly resisted having fisheries observers collecting such data presumably because they prefer their harvest of the deep to remain unseen. Right now around 5% of New Zealand-flagged bottom trawlers have observers onboard.
Tomorrow we will release some shocking images taken by government fisheries observers on board NZ bottom trawling vessels over the past two years. We got hold of the photos using the NZ official information act.
Comments on this entry:
Go Greenpeace -Save the bottom trawl victims!!
Posted by: Blobby at February 11, 2006 11:49 PM
