Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation fails to protect fish says Greenpeace
mongabay.com
July 27, 2005
In a new report, environmental group Greenpeace calls for a ban on bottom-trawling, a commercial fishing practice that causes serious damage to sea beds.
Focusing on the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO), an organization mandated to “to contribute through consultation and co-operation to the optimum utilization, rational management and conservation of the fishery resources,” the case study argues that NAFO is “plagued by overfishing and misreporting by members because of a disregard for quotas and other regulations and the existence and subsequent frequent use of its objection procedure.” Greenpeace argues that “NAFO has an appalling record” when it comes to managing the Northwest Atlantic fishery, citing a study [“High Seas Bottom Fisheries and their Impacts on the Biodiversity of Vulnerable Deep Sea Ecosystems”] which estimates that 60% of the world’s high seas bottom trawl landings comes from the Northwest Atlantic .
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively pulling a fishing net through the water behind one or more boats. Deep sea trawling is often criticized by environmentalists due to its lack of selectivity (“bycatch”) and the physical damage which the trawl does to the seabed.
The full report is available at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/NAFO-Case-Study
This news item used information from Greenpeace and Wikipedia.
