Thursday, 18 March 2021, 12:03 pm
Press Release: Deep Sea Conservation Coalition
New
science released overnight shows bottom trawling
releases more carbon dioxide than aviation, coinciding with
a renewed call from environmental groups for the Government
to tackle the impacts of New Zealand’s bottom trawling
industry.
As this news came to light, a coalition of
environment, conservation and recreational fisheries
organisations have written to Fisheries Minister David
Parker to use the powers he has under the Fisheries Act to
stop trawl fleets from trashing deep sea life, warning that
continued inaction is incompatible with New Zealand’s
international obligations to protect biodiversity and
prevent runaway climate change.
The
letter, from eight organisations: Forest & Bird,
ECO, Greenpeace, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition,
LegaSea, NZ Sport Fishing, Our Seas Our Future and WWF-NZ,
warns of the terrible destruction being wrought on
vulnerable seabed ecosystems by our bottom trawling
fleet.
Bottom
trawling is a highly destructive fishing activity that
drags heavy nets across the seafloor destroying deep sea
corals and other marine life. In doing so, it not only
destroys biodiversity, but also releases carbon stored in
the seabed.
Jessica Desmond, oceans campaigner
at Greenpeace Aotearoa said bottom trawling is a
double whammy for the ocean, destroying biodiversity while
simultaneously disturbing the world’s largest carbon
sink.
“For two decades, environmentalists have been
urging the Government to protect ocean wildlife from the
habitat destroying practice of bottom trawling. This new
science shows that there’s another side to that coin –
releasing a gigaton of carbon that has been stored away in
the ocean.”.
Kevin Hague, CEO of Forest & Bird,
said:
“In the last 12 months alone, 29 species of
coral have been trawled up in nets in New Zealand waters.
Scientific studies show that deep sea corals can take up to
30 years to even begin to recover from the
damage.”
“Entire protected coral habitats are
allowed to be destroyed because it’s officially considered
unintended. There is nothing unintended about rolling huge
heavy nets across the seabed smashing everything in their
way,” the groups point
out in the letter.
The groups are calling on the
Government to:
Immediately protect seamounts and
similar features
Immediately freeze the current bottom
trawling footprint based on a 2006 baseline
Require
fishers to shift five nautical miles from where they’re
fishing if they start dragging up corals
Require all
trawl fishing gear to be off the seafloor within seven
years
