|
Posted on 11-10-2004
Fished Once Gone Forever
By Catherine Masters and Michael Richardson
It's quiet at the bottom of the ocean and dark where sunlight never
reaches. But illuminate it with artificial light and strange life emerges.
Translucent, glittery creatures with bulging eyes and oversized
razor-sharp teeth. Crazy crabs with spikes. Pretty corals, odd-looking
creatures such as a seafloor-dwelling octopus known as Dumbo because he
looks like an elephant.
For New Zealand marine scientist Steve O'Shea it's heaven - species yet to
be discovered and documented, mysterious bottom dwellers. "And before
we've even described it, a bloody great net comes down and smashes it all
to bits."
O'Shea is talking about bottom trawlers, commercial fishing boats with
nets kilometres wide with heavy rollers which drop hundreds of metres,
smashing coral and rock and dragging everything in their path, from ghost
sharks to Dumbo to 1000-year-old corals. The trawlers sort through the
haul, keeping the commercial fish such as orange roughy and chucking away
the rest.
If O'Shea and other scientists and conservationists are to be believed,
after the trawlers have gone the sea floor in their path is devastated and
ecosystems wiped out. The fishing industry would have you believe O'Shea
and company are greenies exaggerating the impact of their
multimillion-dollar business. They say they target the schools, keeping
damage minimum.
Bottom trawling is the big issue in international environmental circles.
The sides are poles apart. There is no middle ground.
In August this year New Zealand scientists were among more than 1000 from
69 countries who signed a call for a moratorium on bottom trawling on the
high seas. They are begging for time to make the discoveries and consider
the long-term impact before it is all destroyed. The United Nations is set
to debate it in coming weeks.
This week the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition again appealed to the United
Nations, claiming 95 per cent of the matter in hauls was thrown back. But
New Zealand's Seafood Industry Council says a ban would be devastating to
a $1.2 billion industry with $800 million coming from exports from species
caught by trawling and related methods.
New Zealand is surrounded by an area of water known as the Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ). Within this area there are rules and quotas. Outside,
in international waters, there are no rules. A bone of contention, inside
and outside the zone, is the underwater mountains known as seamounts -
spectacularly diverse in life and a spawning ground for many species.
International standards define a seamount as an underwater structure
rising 1000m or more above the surrounding terrain. That definition has
become more generalised and takes in smaller features.
The fishing industry says it hardly fishes true seamounts in New Zealand
waters but fishes the smaller bumps and knolls.
A study by Niwa, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research,
says 80 per cent of seamounts at depths of 500 to 1000m have been fished,
adding that the fisheries have become more focused on seamounts. In 2001
bottom trawling was banned on just 19.
Malcolm Clark, study co-author, refuses to be drawn into the debate but
says Niwa has found an "incredible" variety of life on anyone's definition
of a seamount. That's only seamounts. The world is just beginning to learn
about deep-sea coral and fish reefs.
Clark says, "The most effective way of catching bottom-associated fish
like orange roughy is with a trawl that sits on the sea floor and
basically herds the fish between the top of the net and the sea floor so
there's nowhere to escape. That, of course, catches other unwanted
species."
Greenpeace in New Zealand says because fish stocks are so depleted fishers
are heading more into international waters.
In June Greenpeace headed to the north-western ridge of the Challenger
Plateau, off the west coast of New Zealand, in international waters known
for orange roughy trawling. They found seven boats, six from New Zealand.
In Greenpeace style, they inspected the fish in the nets hauled up, taking
photographs and collecting bycatch spat out through the waste chute. They
say the hauls were full of deep sea creatures, including a piece of
endangered black coral.
Oceans' spokeswoman Carmen Gravatt says only one net had a majority of
orange roughy.
"Only about 0.2 per cent of the global fish catch which comes from high
seas bottom trawling. That's not feeding the world ... New Zealand is one
of 11 that are taking 95 per cent of the catch from the high seas."
Others say it is half the global catch and that 40 or more countries
bottom trawl.
A Timaru trawler is scathing of Greenpeace. Trawling harms the bottom a
bit, says Gordon Kenton of Kenton Trawling Co. "But it's 1000m under the
ocean. What harm is it doing if it's not absolutely wrecking it. Who's
going to see? It's not hurting anything long-term."
His boat fishes off the north-west Chatham Rise within the New Zealand
exclusive economic zone, towing only on the flat while others tow in the
hills and valleys. It is a vast area with only one to two dozen trawlers
fishing the area, and they are not all there at once.
Vast is right. The EEZ stretches about 4 million sq km compared to the New
Zealand land mass of 268,000 sq km.
George Clement, chief executive of the Orange Roughy Management Company,
says the fishing industry's footprint on the sea floor is small.
He is adamant in the New Zealand waters they do not fish seamounts, those
1000m or higher, saying many are inaccessible or too steep or do not have
the commercial fish they are after.
But they do fish some of the smaller hills and valleys, comparing it to
fishing Mt Eden in Auckland as opposed to Mt Ruapehu.
He says the very large nets, cited by Greenpeace, are not used for bottom
trawling as they would be ripped to shreds. Bottom nets are not more than
10m wide and 50m long. He admits bottom trawling has an impact but reckons
less than 5 per cent of the world's 75 per cent of ocean would be
impacted.
"It would be a bit like going into the McKenzie Country and looking around
at this wonderful untouched, unspoiled area and then seeing somebody had
dug a vegetable garden and it was growing brussel sprouts."
The industry was prepared to make changes where required - but would not
respond to hysteria.
Other fishermen are worried. "The fish are disappearing, all right," said
one who did not want to be named.
Another fisherman talked of technology with scanning equipment on boats
which build a three-dimensional image of where the fish were."There is
nowhere the fish can hide now. I'm sure we'll have to destroy the
fisheries before we learn the lesson."
Marine scientist Professor Daniel Pauly, from British Columbia University,
who has visited New Zealand, talks about the rise of slime. When
ecosystems such as those on seamounts or reefs are destroyed the bottom
becomes muddy. Every storm stirred it up and only small organisms survive.
"You encourage the growth of short-lived animals, most of which are
microbial and jellyfish and so on. Short-lived algal blooms, all these
things are part of the rise of slime and the ultimate fact there is that
you have such algal blooms and when they die they consume all the oxygen
and you get a dead zone."
Dead zones, he says, are the ultimate stage of over-fishing, destruction
and pollution.
He describes bottom trawling as, "It's like you want to weed your garden
and you use a bulldozer. The topsoil is gone, the worms are gone,
everything's gone."
The New Zealand Government is stuck in the middle. Fisheries Minister
David Benson-Pope acknowledges the practice is damaging and an issue that
had to be addressed at home and internationally.
The Government's recommendation to the UN is to implement interim bans on
bottom trawling in vulnerable areas. With Australia, it is looking to
protect parts of the mid-Tasman.
For Greenpeace and Steve O'Shea, it is not enough. Remember Dumbo, the
octopus, says O'Shea. There were nine species of Dumbo in New Zealand
waters but four are already effectively extinct - because of bottom
trawling.
|
