Members of the EU Parliament's Fisheries Committee in industry pocket, fail to derail deep sea protection legislation
18 June 2013
Members of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) attending a Parliamentary Hearing to debate new deep-sea fisheries legislation designed to protect vulnerable ocean habitats, have criticized the proceeding as a deliberate waste of time designed to derail the push for protection.
Letter to Members of the European Parliament's Fisheries Committee
12 June 2013
A group of leading NGO and scientific institutes in Europe call on the European Parliament's Fisheries Committee to ensure that the debate on new
legislation for the management of deep-sea fishing in the North-East Atlantic progresses without delay.
Pêche abusive : un Petit Poucet veut faire la peau aux Mousquetaires
9 June 2013
Une association de défense de l'environnement appelle François Hollande à faire cesser le chalutage en eaux profondes pratiqué notamment par Intermarché.
Canada's Minister MacKay Announces Support to Canada’s Unique Marine Habitat on World Oceans Day
8 June 2013
PICTOU, Nova Scotia – The Honourable Peter MacKay, Regional Minister for Nova Scotia, on behalf of the Honourable Keith Ashfield, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, announced today that the Harper Government is protecting two areas of the Scotian Shelf by closing them to bottom-contact fishing. This action protects a rare sponge off Nova Scotia on the eastern Scotian Shelf, Vazella Pourtalesi, from intrusive human activities.
Did you know?
Some cold-water corals are between 5,000 and 8,000 years old, the same age or even older than the great Pyramids of Egypt.
Deep-sea cold-water corals support 1,500 species of fish.
Deep-sea fish like the orange roughy live for 150 years.
Elephants will live for around 70 years in the wild.
Deep-sea fish like the orange roughy live for 150 years.
The oldest bird recorded was 77, the oldest cat was 38.
There are more than 100,000 seamounts across the globe. They are like highway service stations for the ocean.
Seamounts are deliberately targeted by bottom impact trawlers, which smash and scrape the sides of the mountain bare in their quest for fish.
Less than 0.001 percent of the world’s seamounts have been studied in detail, that’s the equivalent of just one out of 100,000.
The no-take protected area of the whole Mediterranean Sea amounts to around 202km², an area just twice the size of Paris.
Every year some 15 million square km of ocean is bottom trawled — an area bigger than Canada, and one and a half times the size of Europe.
A trawl scar can be 4km long — it would take you an hour to walk along its length, longer to swim it.
The average trawl releases enough silt to fill 3,500 Olympic-size swimming pools or the entire Empire State Building.
