Fishing is ‘ bulldozing’ our seas
Commercial fisheries are ‘‘bulldozing’’ ocean floors, Greenpeace says.
Its calculations show that in the 2017-18 season, New Zealand commercial fishing vessels destroyed up to 3000 tonnes of coral and other vulnerable species through bottom trawling.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond said fishing vessels were ‘‘scraping the sea floor clean’’.
‘‘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 research 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.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) fisheries management director Stuart Anderson said the ministry had observed about 30 tonnes of coral collected in 2018-19, though coverage on large trawl vessels was about 43 per cent for the past five years.
Desmond said the bottom trawling fleet was ‘‘bulldozing our oceans’’. The highest amounts of coral were taken from off the coast of Southland, but the country’s fisheries were also damaging corals in international waters, she said.
But what was pulled up in the nets was only a ‘‘tiny fraction’’ of the damage to the seafloor, she said. ‘‘For every tonne of coral brought up in the net, up to 340 tonnes are destroyed below.’’
Seafood NZ communications manager Lesley Hamilton said Greenpeace’s survey analysis was based on higherdensity reef-building corals, not those found in colder New Zealand waters.
‘‘It also ignores the fact that 85 per cent of the coral in nets is coral ‘rubble’ – coral that has already died and disintegrated.’’
Greenpeace protesters covered Parliament’s lawn with replica coral yesterday morning to call on the Government to take urgent action.
More than 40,000 New Zealanders had called for the Government to ban bottom trawling.