Fishing vessels 'bulldozing' oceans, destroying 3000 tonnes of coral in one year

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Commercial fishers are 'bulldozing' ocean floors, says Greenpeace.

Its calculations show that in the 2017-2018 fishing season, New Zealand commercial fishing vessels destroyed up to 3000 tonnes of coral and other vulnerable species through bottom trawling.

Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond said they're 'scraping the sea floor clean', and showed no signs of stopping.

'We're one of the seven countries still trawling in international waters and it's really such an archaic practice, and such a destructive process,' she said. 'We really need to stop.'

Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond at a protest against ocean bottom trawling at Parliament on Tuesday.

*** Bottom trawling for orange roughy has scientists worried

* Environment groups lambast fishing industry

* Forest and Bird slam trawling companies over seabed protection**

Little is known about trawling's long-term impact on the array of plant, fish and invertebrate life on the seabed.

Findings from New Zealand researchers this year had environmentalists pushing for a ban on bottom trawling, the primary method of catching deep sea fish, likening its impact on seabed wildlife to the destruction of kauri forests.

Instead, the Government announced in September it would increase bottom trawling for orange roughy.

Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) fisheries management director Stuart Anderson said the Ministry had observed around 30 tonnes of coral collected in 2018/19, although coverage on large trawl vessels was around 43 per cent for the last five years.

The Government announced in September it will increase bottom trawling for orange roughy.

Fisheries NZ monitored all fishing activity by requiring reporting of all catch and by placing Fisheries NZ observers on a portion of vessels.

'The most recent of these reports indicated that less than 8 per cent of New Zealand's exclusive economic zone has been contacted by bottom fishing between 1998/99 and 2016/17.

Rules required the impacts of fishing on the sea floor were 'avoided or minimised'.

'Fisheries management is about striking the right balance between food production and impact on the environment, and a large proportion of the annual catch of seafood in New Zealand waters is currently caught using bottom trawling.'

Desmond said the New Zealand bottom trawling fleet was 'bulldozing our oceans'.

Trawlers hunting for fish in the depths of the sea may be doing irreversible damage to vast coral reefs on the seafloor.

In New Zealand, the highest amounts of ocean coral were taken from off the coast of Southland, but the country's fisheries were also damaging corals in international waters, she said.

But what was pulled up in the nets was only a 'tiny fraction' of the damage to the seafloor, she said.

'For every tonne of coral brought up in the net, up to 340 tonnes are destroyed below.'

Little is known about bottom trawling's long-term impact on the array of plant, fish and invertebrate life on the seabed.

Seafood New Zealand communications manager Lesley Hamilton said Greenpeace's survey analysis was based on higher density reef-building corals, not those found in colder New Zealand waters.

'It also ignores the fact that 85 per cent of the coral in nets is coral 'rubble' - coral that has already died and disintegrated.'

Greenpeace protesters covered Parliament lawn with replica coral on Tuesday morning to call on the Government to take urgent action.

More than 40,000 New Zealanders had called for the Government to ban bottom trawling.

Spain, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Cook Islands and the Faroe Islands are the countries still using trawling.