Dear Commissioners In the coming weeks you will be deciding on a proposal that concerns one of the EUs most destructive least profitable most fuelintensive and subsidised fishing practices ID: 162484
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Slide1
© Greenpeace / Virginia Lee Hunter
Dear Commissioners,
In
the coming weeks, you will be deciding on a proposal that concerns
one of the
EU’s most destructive, least profitable, most fuel-intensive and
subsidised fishing practices.
Your decisions will determine
the
integrity of deep-sea
ecosystems
and the future
of
some of the most
overexploited and vulnerable
fish
stocks
in
our seas.
Yet
only a small number of vessels
and jobs are affected.
Slide2
© Greenpeace / Kate Davison
Our organisations believe that the EU cannot afford to keep these fisheries afloat and that the Commission should table a phase-out of all unsustainable deep-sea fisheries including a prohibition of deep-sea bottom trawling.Slide3
© C. Nouvian / D. Shale
The deep sea begins around 200 meters below the surface, beyond the shelf edge, where light does not penetrate. It ends in the ocean’s abyss, at an average depth of 4,000 metres
. Slide4
It
is one of the planet’s largest reservoirs of biodiversity - h
o
me to more species of corals than shallow waters,
some as old as 8,500 years
. Slide5
Deep-sea ecosystems perform ecological and biogeochemical processes vital to the functioning of the world’s oceans and our climate.
© Volcanoes of the Deep Sea / Ste
phen Low CoSlide6
© Greenpeace / Malcolm Pullman
Deep-sea fisheries
affect species, which live long, grow slowly and
reproduce
late in life – akin
to
humans and elephants. These factors make deep-sea species fundamentally
vulnerable to overexploitation. Slide7
© Greenpeace / Virginia Lee Hunter
Bottom trawl fishing is the most common and most destructive way to catch deep-sea fish. A bottom trawl drags huge, heavy nets across the sea floor, damaging the animals that populate deep-sea habitat
s,
often irreversibly. Slide8
© Greenpeace / Malcolm Pullman
Trawlers
scrape up large cold water corals and can catch and kill species which are of no commercial value
. Slide9
Up to half or more of what a bottom trawler catches and kills
is discarded at sea. This is one of the highest discard
rates in the European fleet.
© Greenpeace / Roger Grace
© Greenpeace / Kate
Davison
© Greenpeace / Kate Davison
© Greenpeace / Kate DavisonSlide10
© Greenpeace
Scientific surveys
have located trawl
impacts even at
200-1400 m depth all
along the Northeast
Atlantic
shelf break area
off the coasts of Ireland
, Scotland and Norway.
© GreenpeaceSlide11
Alarmingly, all
deep-sea
stocks exploited by
EU fleets in the North East Atlantic are seriously depleted,
according to
the EU’s own assessments
.
© Greenpeace / Kate DavisonSlide12
A deep-sea bottom trawler typically burns thousands of litres of fuel per day. This makes them extremely vulnerable to fuel price increases, and dependent on fuel subsidies.
© Greenpeace / Kate DavisonSlide13
Deep-sea bottom trawl fishing offers
no room
for controversy
:
it is destructive
,
unsustainable, unselective,
fuel-intensive, a
drain on the
public purse
and offers
little value to the EU.
We
ask you to recommend a
prohibition of deep-sea bottom trawling and a phase-out
of
unsustainable deep-sea fishing.
© D Shale
In the Commission’s own words:
“[t]he progressive elimination of destructive fishing practices is an objective shared internationally and subscribed by the European Community.”