According to the preliminary findings of a new scientific report titled ‘the Implementation of UN Resolution 61/105 in the Management of Deep-Sea Fisheries on the High Seas,’ there is a systematic failure by fisheries managers in the North Atlantic to protect the deep oceans. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) has said it’s time to stop unregulated deep sea bottom fishing.
The report said that the measures taken to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems and deep-sea species on the high seas in the North Atlantic are at best inadequate and at worst non-existent. Lead author of the report, Dr Alex Rogers of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), said that in the Northeast Atlantic deep-sea fisheries, there has been extensive misreporting, under-reporting or non-reporting of catch, particularly of by-catch species and some species are threatened with extinction.
Matthew Gianni, Policy Advisor to the DSCC informed that the UN resolution was designed to provide protection for vulnerable deep sea areas and species in lieu of a moratorium. It is told that the RFMOs have failed to fully implement the resolution, without exception. The only alternative is to impose a temporary prohibition on all bottom fishing for deep-sea species in these areas until the RFMOs do what they have committed to do through the UN and prove that they can fish responsibly.
Matthew Gianni also noted that the UN Secretary General’s own report has already concluded that implementation of the resolution is inadequate and this new scientific analysis confirms that.
