With increasingly sophisticated technology enabling fishing on the seabed, some species have become particularly vulnerable, writes Iva Pocock
It would be fair to say orange roughy and many Western women have one thing in common - reproducing in their late twenties - except that the deep-sea fish have no choice in the matter. They only become fertile at this age.
Like many other fish species that inhabit oceans such as the north-east Atlantic at depths of one kilometre, they are slow-growing and long-lived, with a life span of over 150 years. Their longevity and late fertility mean they are particularly vulnerable to overfishing.
"Stocks are very vulnerable to decimation as they just take too long to reproduce," says Matthew Giani, a former fisherman and now spokesman for the Deep Sea Coalition, a grouping of environmental organisations.
For as long as fishing vessels were incapable of reaching down to these great depths, species such as orange roughy were safe from human exploitation, but in the last 20 years, technological developments in vessels' winch capacity and geographical positioning systems have transformed orange roughy into much-soughtafter commercial species.
So much so that the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) now says catches of deep-water fish such as orange roughy, roundnose grenadier and black scabbardfish must be urgently reduced as these species have been fished well beyond their biological limits.
In 2002, these species were brought into the EU quota system and last year the European Commission took ICES advice by proposing that so-called "fishing effort" (measured in time out of port and energy usage) and quotas for these fisheries be reduced this year and next.
The Commission also proposed limiting previously uncontrolled catches of deep sea shark. It suggested a maximum cut of 50 per cent for the most endangered species and 30 per cent for the less threatened creatures.
But by the time the political storms over these proposed reductions had abated, the urgent scientific advice was significantly watered down in the new fishing regulations signed by EU fisheries ministers just before Christmas last.
A spokeswoman for the World Wildlife Fund said: "EU ministers only managed to reduce the quotas by 15 per cent. This is unacceptable as this is not long-term management for European fish stock."
However, in recognition that in certain areas of the north-east Atlantic "the exploitation rate of orange roughy is . . . far too high" and stocks are "heavily depleted", protection areas have been defined where fishing this species is prohibited.
It's a conservation mechanism that Michael Keatinge, fisheries development manager with Bord Iascaigh Mhara, says is bound to fail: "Fishermen who are catching other species in these areas will simply discard the orange roughy." He also says that as "orange roughy are a species which congregate, it'll be the equivalent of closing the whole of the Phoenix Park because there are a few drug addicts under the Wellington monument".
The best means of protecting vulnerable deep sea fish species is to close "smaller areas to all species", says Keatinge, who believes every fishery can be managed sustainably.
The Department of the Environment will be proposing deep-sea special areas of conservation by June this year, according to a spokeswoman.
Keatinge accepts that Irish fishing vessels are partly responsible for the fact such species are in trouble, but argues "vehemently" that we are not the main part of the problem.
THIS IS CONFIRMED by the quota allocations for European and international waters agreed in December last, which are largely determined by the size of each nation's catch to date.
Irish boats were given a quota of 304 tonnes of roundnosed grenadier, in contrast to their French counterparts who have an allocation of 4046 tonnes. The difference between us and our Gallic neighbours isn't as great in relation to the long-lived orange roughy - our vessels can catch almost 300 tonnes, while they are confined to about three times this amount.
"In terms of divvying out the new species, we didn't do great and yet most of them are on our back door," says Sean O'Donoghue, chief executive of the Killybegs Fishermens' Organisation.
There are only four fishing vessels equipped with the necessary winching capacity to haul in species such as orange roughy from the depths of the ocean, according to the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.
"I don't see the number of those vessels increasing," says O'Donoghue. "I'm pretty sure they won't." Apart from their impact on these deep-sea fish species, there are a number of other reasons why conservationists criticise the activities of these super-high-tech fishing vessels.
Firstly, they criticise the amount of discard (unwanted dead fish), saying that numerous undocumented species are being depleted. Recent footage taken by Greenpeace activists who had managed to get on board a Spanish deep-sea trawler (remarkably, the skipper welcomed them on board) about 400 nautical miles west of Rockall, showed Ghanaian workers sorting catch from a conveyor belt, about half of which was chucked down the by-catch chute back into the ocean.
Discard collected from alongside another vessel included green-eyed sharks, spider crabs and coral, which Greenpeace scientists said illustrates the ecological impact of this style of fishing.
ANOTHER MAJOR CONCERN for conservationists is with the physical destruction caused to the fragile coral sea-mounts around which the likes of orange roughy live. Bottom-trawling, the technique used to catch these species, involves dragging heavy rock-hopping equipment, large rubber discs and steel boards along the ocean bottom to prevent nets snagging.
"Unfortunately, this equipment acts like a steamroller and crushes coral or other animals that it encounters," says Anthony Grehan, an ecologist at the department of earth and ocean sciences in NUI Galway and one of five authors of a United Nations report entitled Cold-water coral reefs: out of sight - no longer out of mind.
Grehan says that one study in New Zealand documenting the effect of orange roughy fishing on a sea-mount showed that over 90 per cent of the corals had been removed.
Some organisations say bottom-trawling is akin to ploughing a field. "These are very high-tech trawlers, which can tell with remarkable precision, down to a few metres, where they are in the ocean," says a Greenpeace spokesman. "From footage we got of their tracking system, it's clear they can scrape up and down along a bank, in very close lines."
O'Donoghue, of the Killybeg's Fishermen's Organisation, rejects this suggestion, saying that it is not in fishermen's interests to get equipment caught on corals because of the costs incurred. He also disagrees with calls for a total moratorium on deep-sea bottom-trawling in the high seas (those areas of the world's oceans that lie beyond individual country's economic control).
Last December, a coalition of scientists and environmental groups failed in their bid to get the UN to endorse such a precautionary approach.
"A blanket ban is a non-runner. It makes no sense," says O'Donoghue. "Already the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission has agreed five areas that are closed to all trawling. To me, this is the best way of approaching it." He stresses that Ireland is one of the few nations that has put a lot of work into classifying the deep-sea environment.
Indeed Ireland is a world leader in terms of seafloor mapping. It has the most detailed and comprehensive maps of its sea-floor territories, says Grehan, whose department is co-ordinating Irish involvement in a €15-million EU investigation into deep-sea ecosystems that begins this year. A major target is the study of fragile cold-water corals off our west coast.
With luck, advice arising from this research will be taken on board by political interests in time to ensure there will be orange roughy spawning deep beneath our seas, even at the lateage of 30.