UN Convention on Biological Diversity: Trawlers scraping the ocean bottom with nets, heavy chains and steel plates threaten thousands of deep-sea species for questionable economic return, environmental groups said yesterday.
Slow-growing, long-lived corals, sponges and fish living in habitats supporting anything between 500,000 and 100 million species are particularly vulnerable, a trio of international environmental organisations said.
The economic value of such deep-sea fisheries was unlikely to exceed $300 million to $400 million annually versus an annual marine fish catch worth $75 billion, they said, and urged that the areas be protected instead for their wide variety of life.
"Protecting deep-seas environments from sea-bed trawling would not have a widespread economic impact nor significantly affect fish supplies, prices or food security," report author Mr Matthew Gianni said in a statement.
The WWF, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Natural Resources Defence Council launched the document to coincide with a two-week meeting in Kuala Lumpur of parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Ms Ghislaine Llewellyn, a WWF marine expert, said the fisheries concerned were those below 400m down to 2,000 m, dotted across the northern Atlantic, the south-west Indian Ocean and southwest Pacific.
She said the fleets involved, no more than 250 to 300 vessels in total, came from fishing nations including Spain, Ireland, France, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand.
Officials from 188 countries and other CBD parties gathered on Monday for talks intended to slow significantly the rate of global extinctions of animals and plants by 2010.
Delegates are discussing ways to promote greater protection of forests, river systems, oceans and mountains and to curb the effects of climate change on species loss.