Fisheries dying

Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 14:04:19 -0400 (AST)
From: "David M. Wimberly" <ag487@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: Sustainable-Maritimes <sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca>
Precedence: bulk
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Come out and support us presenters on the Georges Bank Moritirium issue.
Let's broaden it to make the area a "Dragger/Trawler Free Zone."




        Monday, January 11, 1999 
	 The Halifax Herald Limited
                                      
Only benign fishery methods keep fisheries sustainable

   By Ralph Surette
   
   NEARLY TWO decades after the world began learning that tropical
   forests and their biological diversity are being devastated, it is
   difficult to imagine that another human disturbance of even greater
   extent could occur almost unnoticed by scientists, the media and
   political leaders. But there is one: fishing on the seabed with towed
   gear such as trawls and dredges."
   
   That's from a thick scientific journal entitled Conservation Biology.
   
   In its December issue, the Massachusetts-based periodical has
   assembled a mounting body of evidence from around the world on the
   effects of dragged gear and declares itself "disturbed."
   
   Here in Atlantic Canada, where the groundfish fishery is mostly kaput,
   and the remainder of it off western Nova Scotia is being
   bottom-trawled as before and apparently sinking fast, we should be
   disturbed as well.
   
   For what the scientists are saying is that the problem is not just
   that we're wiping out the fish, but their habitat and much of their
   food supply as well - a logical reason why the fish are not only not
   coming back, but also why the remaining ones are smaller than they
   should be and dwindling.
   
   "Mobile fishing gear crushes, buries and exposes marine animals and
   structures on and in the substratum, sharply reducing structural
   diversity," the journal's lead article states. By churning up the
   bottom continually on a vast scale "it also alters bio-chemical
   cycles, perhaps even globally."
   
   There are before-and-after pictures: rich bottoms of marine plants and
   animals before trawling, a desert after.
   
   The scientists compare bottom-trawling and "dredging" (not just for
   groundfish, but for scallops and deep-sea clams in our waters, and
   many other species in southern latitudes) with the loss of forests
   worldwide and declare trawling a worse assault on living species.
   
   The area of forest loss in the world each year equals about the size
   of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. The area trawled is about 150
   times larger - larger than all of Canada.
   
   Coral reefs, rock reefs, seagrass beds, kelp beds and so on - features
   that are flattened by trawling - provide the "habitat complexity" that
   improves the survival rate of fish, especially at the juvenile stage.
   A study of cod done off Nova Scotia in 1995 is cited which showed that
   survival and growth are better "in structurally more complex habitats
   where the cod can avoid predators."
   
   It's not that everything is destroyed by trawling, but that only
   "opportunistic species" that require a less complex habitat can
   survive.
   
   Nor are the effects the same everywhere. Shallow sandy areas, like
   some parts of Georges Bank, are already "storm tossed" and life there
   is more used to disturbance. However the deeper you go the greater the
   disturbance.
   
   And the fishery has been going not only deeper but wider - the latest
   development being "rock-hopper" gear allowing rougher bottom to be
   trawled.
   
   The scientists want "no trawling zones" to allow the bottom to
   recover, less destructive gear, a broader section of the public
   involved in fishery decision-
   
   making, and other measures.
   
   I would go farther.
   
   A sustainable fishery is not now, nor ever has been, consistent with
   anything but hook and line, cod traps and other benign gear that
   doesn't disturb the bottom.
   
   For the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the message is clear:
   start creating dragger exclusion zones now, and ultimately phase out
   otter trawling entirely where the fishery is still open, and don't
   ever let it come back in those areas now closed.
   
   The scientists contritely admit that they're late on this - a story
   that is out of view, unlike forest destruction, and with little public
   pressure.
   
   Yet people endowed with nothing more than common sense have been
   warning about the destructiveness of trawling from the beginning, and
   trawlers were even banned in Maritime nearshore waters for a time.
   
   Let us merely hope that this late wisdom is not, in fact, too late.
   
   e-mail: rj.surette@ns.sympatico.ca
   
                                      
                                  [2] Back
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                Copyright © 1999 The Halifax Herald Limited
     _________________________________________________________________

References

   0. http://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/altdisplaystory?1999/01/11+113.raw+altColumnists
   1. http://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/altsecfront?1999/01/11+altColumnists#113.raw
   2. http://www.herald.ns.ca/cgi-bin/home/altsecfront?1999/01/11+altColumnists#113.raw



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