Whereas the European Union is getting ready, for the spring, an “motion plan for the ocean” meant to guard marine ecosystems, environmental organizations are focusing their efforts on one fishing approach specifically: the seabed trawling. It consists of scraping the ocean flooring with heavy equipment, capturing species nearly indiscriminately, all with a variety of gasoline. It’s thought-about to be « Essentially the most dangerous to the surroundings and the local weather » by a coalition of NGOs – Oceana, Seas at Threat, Our Fish, Environmental Justice Basis amongst others.
As a part of the general public session open till January 10, it submitted on December 20, 2021 a petition, with greater than 152,000 signatories, to the European Commissioner accountable for this sector, Virginijus Sinkevicius. It requires the rapid ban of backside trawling in all marine protected areas – that is at the moment removed from being the case in Germany, the Netherlands, or France. This observe can be denounced in an in depth abstract printed on December 9, written by some forty lecturers, NGOs and environmental consultants, with the monetary help of American foundations (Oceans 5, Oak Basis and Oceankind).
Globally, backside trawls – regardless of the dimension of the boat and the kind of web – make up a big share of all fisheries: round 26%, report the authors. Annually, these nets haul up a minimum of 30 million tonnes of seafood, roughly the equal of what all artisanal fishermen catch. The remaining corresponds to numerous different gears: mid-water midwater trawls, nets set, longlines, and many others., industrial or not. Backside trawlers function nearly completely within the Unique Financial Zones (EEZs) of coastal nations, hardly ever venturing past 200 nautical miles. They’re even partially confined inside 12 miles of the shore the place they take 20% of their catch. They then discover themselves in direct competitors with the small boats of the craftsmen and the canoes of the native communities.
Fierce rivalry between states
“World catches may enhance if there was much less trawling. While you overfish, the yields lower for everybody ”, says Daniel Pauly. This internationally acknowledged specialist is behind the Canadian College of British Columbia Sea Round Us program, which reconstructed many years of seafood catches from 1950 to 2018. The Backside Trawl Impacts Report relies on this distinctive database, in addition to on a evaluate of the scientific literature. Its authors discover that this fishing methodology peaked at 36.5 million tonnes in 1989, earlier than declining throughout the globe. Besides in Asia, which didn’t comply with the identical pattern, quite the opposite.
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