Fishing is ‘ bulldozing’ our seas
Commercial fishermen are ‘‘bulldozing’’ ocean floors, says Greenpeace.
Its calculations show that in the 2017-2018 fishing season, fishing vessels destroyed up to 3000 tonnes of coral and other vulnerable species through bottom trawling.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond said they’re ‘‘scraping the sea floor clean’’, and showed no signs of stopping.
‘‘We’re one of the seven countries still trawling in international waters and it’s really such an archaic practice, and such a destructive process,’’ she said. ‘‘We really need to stop.’’
Findings from New Zealand researchers this year had environmentalists pushing for a ban on bottom trawling, the primary method of catching deep sea fish, likening its impact on seabed wildlife to the destruction of kauri forests.
Instead, the Government announced in September it would increase bottom trawling for orange roughy.
Desmond said the New Zealand bottom trawling fleet was ‘‘bulldozing our oceans’’.
In New Zealand, the highest amounts of ocean coral were taken from off the coast of Southland, but the country’s fisheries were also damaging corals in international waters, she said.
‘‘For every tonne of coral brought up in the net, up to 340 tonnes are destroyed below.’’
Little is known about bottom trawling’s long-term impact on the array of plant, fish and invertebrate life on the seabed.
Greenpeace protesters covered Parliament lawn with replica coral yesterday to call on the Government to take urgent action.
Desmond said the Government was refusing to listen to tens of thousands of New Zealanders who wanted it stopped.