Calls to curb deep-ocean trawling

Scientists have called for subsidies paid out to a handful of national deep-sea fishing fleets to be stopped immediately in yet another plea to prevent permanent ecological damage and the extinction of some of the longest living creatures on the planet. Without the $150 million of subsidies paid annually, deep-sea fisheries would operate at a loss of $50 million, researchers believe. But the technologically advanced fleets are moving from place to place, fishing areas to extinction before moving on. The researchers said deep-sea species are particularly vulnerable because they reproduce slowly and so are not able to recover. Elliott Norse, of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue, Washington said: " Industrial fisheries are now going thousands of miles, thousands of feet deep and catching things that live hundreds of years in the process — in the least protected place on earth. " In international waters beyond the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zones of coastal countries, many of the fisheries are virtually unregulated. Here fishing fleets operate like roving bandits, using state-of-the-art technologies to plunder the depths, researchers said. said: " There is surely a better way for governments to spend their money than by paying subsidies to a fleet that burns 1.1 billion litres of fuel annually to maintain paltry catches of old growth fish from highly vulnerable stocks. " Most of the subsidies paid to the fleets buy cheap fuel, but governments also offer help with building boats, buying back old boats and tax breaks. Fishermen use powerful ships to drag nets hundreds of metres below the surface. They use GPS and shoal-finding radar to find the best places to trawl and by 'flash freezing' the catch they can stay out to sea for weeks. Deep-sea ecosystems are vulnerable because in the colder, darker waters they are much less productive than shallow seas. " The unregulated catches by these roving bandits are utterly unsustainable, " says Robert News focus Researchers want subsidies to deep-ocean fishing boats withdrawn to prevent the damage they are doing to fragile, little-understood marine ecosystems. Nigel Williams reports. Steneck, of the University of Maine. " With globalised markets, the economic drivers of overfishing are physically removed and so fishermen have no stake in the natural systems they affect, " says Steneck. " While it may be good for short-term business practice to fish out stocks and move on, we now see global declines …