TL: DRIFTNETS ON THE HIGH SEAS - UN INFO DOCUMENT SO: GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL (GP) DT: November, 1989 Keywords: un driftnets oceans gp fisheries north.pacific taiwan south.korea ussr mediterranean / DRIFTNETTING ON THE HIGH SEAS INFORMATION DOCUMENT ON DRIFTNETS FOR THE 44TH SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS GREENPEACE INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 1989 DRIFTNETTING ON THE HIGH SEAS INTRODUCTION Greenpeace would like to call the attention of all United Nations member states to the impacts of high seas driftnet fisheries on the world's marine resources. Greenpeace is an international environmental organisation with approximately three million supporters worldwide and offices in 23 countries. Greenpeace supports the high seas driftnets moratorium resolution submitted to the United Nations General Assembly by the United States, and co-sponsored by a number of other states. The resolution calls for an immediate ban on the use of high seas driftnets in the South Pacific and a provisional moratorium for the rest of the world's oceans by 1992. Japan has submitted a counter-resolution which calls for a review of the effects of driftnet fishing, but not for a ban on driftnets until such time as they have been scientifically proven to be destructive. However, a full "proof" in scientific terms will require a considerable amount of research and time, during which high seas driftnets will cause incalculable damage to the ecosystem, and considerable economic loss to many fishing nations, especially smaller nations. The burden of proof must be placed on the proponents of high seas driftnet technology. The high seas are a Common Heritage for all nations, and conservation standards which prohibit destructive technologies need to be imposed. @14-SW-BD-L = HIGH SEAS DRIFTNETS High seas driftnets are large scale monofilament plastic gillnets deployed in the open ocean. A standard gillnet is a panel of strong plastic webbing, not biodegradable, suspended vertically in the water by floats attached to the top of the panel and weights attached to the bottom. By adjusting the buoyancy of the net with the floats and weights, the net can be suspended like a curtain at any depth in the water column and left to drift with wind and current to fish the entire area through which it passes. It is a passive fishing device which is acoustically and visually "invisible" to most marine creatures. Greenpeace defines a high seas driftnet as a drift gillnet which is over two kilometres in length and is deployed in international waters outside of nations' Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). A single driftnet vessel can deploy up to 60 kilometres of driftnet to a depth of about 15 metres below the surface in a single setting. The high seas driftnet has been called the "wall of death" because it catches and kills virtually all living creatures that swim into it. Marine creatures, in search of food and lured by fish already caught in the net, swim or dive into the plastic web where they become entangled and drown. The nets are so sheer that they cannot be seen by diving birds or detected by dolphin sonar. Because of their indiscriminate nature, and because they are used outside the jurisdiction of any nation, driftnets make sound ecological management of fisheries resources impossible. During the fishing season in the North Pacific, fishing fleets set more than 32,000 kilometres of net each night. In the South Pacific, where high seas driftnetting began only in 1987, fishing fleets are now setting over 10,000 kilometres of driftnet each night. It is estimated that, annually, the driftnet fleets leave approximately 1,000 kilometres of lost net ("ghost net") floating in the North Pacific. At present rates of fishing, by the year 2000, there will be enough abandoned net to stretch one-third of the way around the world. Lost and abandoned driftnets, combined with discarded trawl nets, other fishing gear, plastics and other debris floating in the sea, entangle and kill thousands of seals, cetaceans, seabirds, marine turtles and fish every year. Entanglement is one factor causing the population decline of the northern and southern fur seals. Some seals manage to escape these "ghost nets", but are still hopelessly entangled in shredded mesh. They may then suffer for several months before dying from injury, starvation or both. @14-SW-BD-L = INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS There have been a number of agreements between countries regarding high seas driftnets. @12-SW-BD-L = North Pacific In 1987, the Driftnet Impact Monitoring, Assessment and Control Act was passed by the United States Government. This act allows the President to impose embargoes on any countries operating a driftnet fishery in the North Pacific which do not cooperate to establish a programme to monitor the impact of those fisheries. This driftnet law set a deadline of 29 June 1989 for the United States to reach agreements with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. On 24 August 1989, the Government of Taiwan signed an agreement with the United States allowing American observers to board its fishing vessels to monitor their use of driftnets. The agreement also calls for all Taiwanese driftnet vessels to be fitted with satellite vessel-locating transponders by 1990 on vessels in order to monitor the location of the fleet. A similar agreement, though weaker, was reached between the United States and Japan in May 1989. This agreement provides for only 14 North American observers to monitor the activities of a fleet of almost 500 vessels, and does not require satellite vessel-locating transponders. South Korea, meanwhile, has also given its consent for United States inspection and monitoring of its driftnet fleet in the North Pacific. Thirteen observers are provided, for a fleet of over 150 vessels, and transponders are required on all vessels for the 1990 season. In September 1989, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in principle on tough sanctions against any nations defying new driftnetting limits in the North Pacific and resolved to encourage scientific research on the full effects of the nets. A fundamental reason behind the United States efforts against high seas driftnets is the increasing evidence that this technology is responsible for intercepting large amounts of non-target species such as salmon, as well as threatened or endangered species of marine mammals. @12-SW-BD-L = South Pacific A meeting of South Pacific Forum countries in Kiribati in July 1989 formulated the Tarawa Declaration, calling for an end to all driftnet fishing in the Forum area. The Tarawa Declaration is a first step toward a Convention on the prohibition of driftnetting in international waters in the area, and sets a precedent for the Pacific and the rest of the world. The South Pacific Commission, meeting in Guam in October 1989, unanimously adopted a resolution on pelagic driftnet fishing. The resolution, calling for a immediate ban on the use of high seas driftnets in the South Pacific, was supported by the governments of France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, in addition to the South Pacific island states. The motivation of the South Pacific states is the increasing evidence that albacore tuna is being indiscriminately over-exploited by high seas driftnet fleets. @12-SW-BD-L = United States In October 1989, the Representative from American Samoa in the United States House of Representatives, Mr Faleomavaega, put forward a resolution along with 230 co-sponsors calling for the United States to support the Tarawa Declaration and regional efforts to end driftnet fishing in the South Pacific. A legislative bill reauthorising the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act has recently cleared the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee in the United States House of Representatives. The Magnuson Act, passed in 1976, extended United States jurisdiction over coastal waters out to 200 nautical miles and set up a framework for national fisheries management. The bill at present contains an amendment to prohibit the use, by United States fishermen, of any driftnet exceeding 1.5 miles (about 2.5 kilometres) in length, both within and beyond the United States EEZ. The bill also contains an amendment directing the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of State to negotiate an end to the use of large scale, high seas driftnets (defined as any driftnet over 1.5 miles long) in international waters, through appropriate international forums. Another amendment specifically directs the United States Commissioners of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to negotiate a prohibition on the use of large scale driftnets in the fisheries in the ICCAT convention area. These include the fisheries for tuna and related (highly migratory) species in the international waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. @14-SW-BD-L = Japan Japan prohibited the use of driftnets with its own EEZ after protests from squid jiggers in 1980 and 1981. In Canadian waters, a joint Canada-Japan experimental driftnet fishery in 1986 and 1987 was terminated, and subsequently Canada prohibited their further use. @12-SW-BD-L = Mediterranean The Spanish government has taken strong measures to prohibit the use of driftnets by Spanish vessels in the Mediterranean. The Spanish Coast Guard is under standing orders from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Nutrition to seize and confiscate any driftnet observed aboard a Spanish vessel in the Mediterranean. The Spanish Parliament is expected to consider legislation to formalise a driftnet prohibition when it comes back into session. The Italian Ministry of Merchant Marine has issued a decree prohibiting the use of driftnets effective from 1 November 1989 until 31 March 1990. The decree calls for an extension of the moratorium beyond the 31 March 1990 if it is determined that driftnet fishing entails an unacceptable impact to the marine environment. In October 1989, the Working Group on Marine Mammals of the Marine Vertebrates and the Cephalopods Committee of CIESM (International Commission for the Scientific Exploration of the Mediterranean Sea), chaired by French scientist Raimond Duguy, passed a resolution requesting governments of the region to take immediate measures to curtail the damage done by driftnets, and to promote thorough research into this issue. @12-SW-BD-L = Others A motion for a resolution regarding driftnets was tabled in the European Parliament in July 1989, which was consequently referred to the Fisheries Subcommittee of the Parliament. The Commonwealth Heads of Government, at their meeting in Kuala Lumpur in October 1989, released a programme of action, the Langkawi Declaration on Environment, which included an agreement to "discourage and restrict non-sustainable fishing practices and seek to ban tangle net and pelagic driftnet fishing". At a meeting of the ACP-EEC Joint Assembly of the Lom‚ Convention in September 1989 a resolution was adopted which urges all EEC and ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) Group -Member States to "work towards a world-wide agreement for sound tuna fishing management, with a ban on the use of driftnets". @14-SW-BD-L = CONCLUSION Greenpeace calls upon states to support the United States Resolution for an immediate ban on high seas driftnets in the South Pacific and a provisional moratorium on all high seas driftnet fishing by 1992 because: @BULLET = High seas driftnets are inherently non- (species) selective; @BULLET = The bycatch of non-target species of fish in high seas driftnets will seriously complicate the management of directed fisheries for those species; @BULLET = An effective programme of international management to control catches of targeted species and bycatch of non-target species, and to eliminate the mortality of other marine wildlife in high seas driftnet fisheries will be very difficult and costly, if not impossible, to establish and enforce; @BULLET = Many species of fish that are capable of being caught with high seas driftnets are already fully exploited and the use of driftnets will not only have negative consequences for users of more traditional forms of gear in fisheries for those species, but will also increase fishing pressure and threaten the depletion of the stocks. Enough scientific evidence is already available to clearly indicate that large-scale high seas driftnets are severely damaging to the world's oceans. Some nations are already moving to curb the use of destructive driftnet technology in their own exclusive economic zones, but it is the responsibility of all nations to ensure the safety of the high seas.