UK Government To Hear "Final Warning" From RCEP On Dredge Fishing

[hatrack]

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This week the government will be offered its starkest warning yet of the consequences of permitting the continued farming of the sea to go unchecked. An 18-month investigation by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution will demand that 30 per cent of the waters around Britain be designated 'marine national parks'. It is a desperate plea from a leading authority, a final warning to an island with a proud seafaring tradition that it risks being surrounded by a lifeless sea. Only by preventing trawlers from entering thousands of square miles of sea by the introduction of 'no-take zones', where fishermen are banned from taking depleted stocks, can the trend be arrested, conclude experts.

Professor Sir Tom Blundell, the biochemist who advises Tony Blair and Parliament on environmental issues, has led the inquiry and has been startled by the evidence charting the decline of the nation's seas. He has found that there is practically nowhere in UK territorial waters which has not been savaged by boats now desperate to track down remaining fish stocks. Of chief concern are the massive factory trawlers that indiscriminately drag gigantic chains, weighing up to 10 tonnes, across seabeds, a 'continuous battering' that is destroying a pristine resource. The trouble is that the seabed cannot be seen, which explains why damaging fishing practices have been allowed to continue for so long.

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A perfect example of the desecration of Britain's deep water is provided by the extraordinary coral growths of the Darwin Mounds off the northwest coast of Scotland which provide a thriving home to fish like the orange roughy in a bleak, cold world. Then news reached Blundell's commission of the deep grooves etched into the 8,000-year-old coral. Orange roughy - which have only recently been fished in numbers - are being frantically scooped up by boats running out of species to catch. The ravaging of the Darwin Mounds has served as a wake-up call for environmentalists and has been the inspiration for the report. A separate report, published tomorrow, will warn that the destruction of precious reefs is not just a domestic phenomenon. A definitive analysis by 240 international experts of the planet's coral reefs will reveal that two-thirds are now severely damaged, a fifth so profoundly that they are unlikely to recover. Some have been bleached to death as sea temperatures warm in the wake of the global warming, Others have suffered the same fate as the Darwin Mounds.

But few places in the world can match the North Sea for the intensity of its fishing. Last week scientists at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory deduced that 90 per cent of the North Sea's floor is trawled at least once a year, in some places up to six times. Dr Jean-Luc Solandt, biodiversity policy officer of the Marine Conservation Society, which gave evidence to Blundell's investigation, warns that Britain has reached a point where the 'complete cessation of the population' of certain species in some areas had arrived."

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http://www.cdnn.info/eco/e041205/e041205.html

[McKenzie]

1. this is a real hot topic in the UK

fishing communities are arguing that restrictions on quotas will sound the death knell - the fisheries scientists are saying if we don't cut back there will be nothing left to catch eventually. I grew up close to small fishing communities so I understand the angst. Equally, the scientists don't say these things unless they have good scientific reasons for doing so.

What is worst of all is watching the opposition political parties trying to make political capital by claiming to support fishing communities against the scientists. Talk about cynical. The EU is taking a bashing too because the r/wing press siezes any opportunity to attack.

edit: crap grammar

[madrchsod]

2. isn`t the problem

factory ships instead of the small boats? i always thought smaller fishing communties used smaller boats. don`t really know much about fishing other than watching tv and movies.