The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition - Save the High Seas

4 July 2009 About Us Contact Us



	2009 ICES symposium, 27-30 Apr, Azores, Portugal

Save the High Seas: Moratorium

Duration

Deep-sea species tend to be slow growing, late maturing and low in reproductive capacity. Many deep-water fish species live 30 years or more. Some, such as orange roughy seen here on the processing line of a factory bottom trawler, can live up to 150 years.

Sponges are some of the oldest multi-cellular animals and have been living in the world’s oceans for over 600 million years. Glass sponges, recently discovered off the coast of British Columbia continue to create towering sponge reefs in a process that has been going on for at least 9000 years. Individual sponges can reach over a metre in height and are thought to be over one hundred years old. Pictured here, sponge ridge at the Davidson Seamount off the coast of California, USA.
Images courtesy of NOAA and MBARI

Because deep-sea species, like this deep water coral, Paragorgia arborea, live in rarely disturbed environments and tend to be slow growing, late maturing and endemic, they are exceptionally vulnerable to extinction.

© Erling Svensen

The high seas bottom trawl moratorium should remain in effect until states have taken significant steps, acting individually, regionally and globally under the guidance of the UNGA and international community, to establish and effectively implement the legally-binding mechanisms necessary to regulate high seas bottom fisheries on a sustainable, equitable and precautionary basis.

In particular, two essential preconditions for lifting the moratoria are:

1. Information adequate to permit informed, science-based management decisions regarding the circumstances under which bottom fishing could occur consistent with obligations to protect biodiversity, apply the precautionary principle and achieve sustainable fisheries management within an ecosystem-based management framework.

In specific terms, information is required regarding:

a. the extent of the biodiversity associated with seamounts, deep-sea corals and other deep-sea structures and ecosystems;

b. the vulnerability of these structures and ecosystems to fishing;

c. the type and extent of damage caused to date by high seas bottom trawling;

d. the relationship between deep-sea structures/ecosystems and pelagic and migratory species; and

e. the overall ecosystem functioning of continental margin and open-ocean ecosystems.

Additional scientific research is required to assess the extent to which deep-sea species can be exploited on the high seas and under what conditions.

Hydrographic mapping and biological sampling is also necessary to enable predictive characterization of areas likely to contain deep-water corals, sponge beds or other deep-sea structures and species vulnerable to bottom trawl fishing and to provide a solid basis for informed management.

2. Global oceans governance structures and functional fisheries management regimes with adequate competence to adopt and enforce effective measures to sustainably manage deep-sea fisheries on the high seas, including high seas bottom trawl fisheries, and to protect biodiversity from the adverse impacts of fishing.

Legally-binding agreements should be entered, implemented and enforced consistent with the precautionary principle and the biodiversity conservation and fisheries management provisions of existing multilateral agreements, such as UNCLOS, the FSA, the CBD and the UN FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

Attention is required by all the international agencies and agreements with either competence over or an interest in managing high seas biodiversity. Having been established primarily to manage the exploitation of natural resources, the FAO's role, though important, would extend only to fisheries management issues. Proper fisheries management alone, however, is only one of several elements that will need to be considered in order to conserve the biodiversity-rich ecosystems of the high seas. The UN Division for Oceans Affairs and the Law of the Sea (DOALOS), or a task force under its auspices, would be the most logical administrative body to develop a comprehensive high seas management regime.

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