Fisheries' Survival Depends on Pirate Crackdown
ROME, Italy, February 23, 2001 (ENS) - Attempts to stop pirate fishing are doomed unless this week's negotiations in Italy can improve on a draft international plan, said environmental group Greenpeace, Thursday.
The Rome based UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is hosting negotiations on the draft International Plan of Action (IPOA).
The FAO says pirate fishing is "widely recognized as a major threat to the sustainability of the world's fisheries."
Pirate fishing vessels are blamed for the destruction of marine ecosystems worldwide. Their unregulated nets and lines do not discriminate between countless tons of fish and hundreds of thousands of sharks, dolphins, sea turtles and endangered seabirds.
Central to the burgeoning pirate fish trade are so called flags of convenience countries. Countries such as Belize, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Panama and St. Vincent and the Grenadines allow fishing boats to operate under their flags without controlling the vessel's activities.
Unscrupulous owners use flags of convenience to avoid fisheries conservation and management regulations, as well as safety and labor standards.
Greenpeace estimates that there are some 1,300 industrial scale fishing vessels flying flags of convenience worldwide.
On Thursday, Greenpeace members made a splash on the final round of international negotiations by wading into Rome's Trevi Fountain. Protesters entered the fountain with four model fishing vessels bearing what Greenpeace considers to be the four main flags of convenience - Belize, Honduras, Panama and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The activists displayed a banner saying "Pirate fishing kills ocean life," before being arrested by police. Greenpeace backed up demonstrations in Rome with similar protests in Brazil and Mexico yesterday.
A Greenpeace report published this week explains how vessels up to 100 meters long sail for months on end under flags of convenience, casting nets across the ocean floor up to two kilometers in circumference.
Such methods drag up and drown thousands of species besides the intended catch. "Some 27 million tonnes of unwanted fish bycatch is caught, killed and dumped back into the sea each year, because of unselective fishing practices and gear," said the report, "Pirate Fishing Plundering the Oceans."
The FAO estimates that 60 to 70 percent of the world's major fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted.
Greenpeace is concerned that the draft IPOA falls short of closing ports to flag of convenience fishing and support vessels, and closing markets to flag of convenience caught fish.
The group wants companies prevented from owning or operating flag of convenience fishing and support vessels.
Similar measures were announced last November by ICCAT. Established in 1969, ICCAT is responsible for the conservation of tunas and tuna like species in the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent seas.
Under a pirate fishing ban, ICCAT's 28 members, including the United States, Japan, China and the European Union's 15 member states, must close their markets to bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) caught by vessels registered to the five flag of convenience countries.
The FAO is attempting to build upon ICCAT's initiative by developing similar measures worldwide. But the devil is in the details.
The European Union is reluctant to support any plan that calls on governments to penalize companies based in their country which own flag of convenience vessels.
Greenpeace calls Brazil, Mexico and the European Union "pirate protectors."
"In blocking tough regulations, these countries are protecting pirate fishers at a time when fishery experts tell us that about three quarters of the world's fisheries are already fully exploited, overexploited or depleted," said Desley Mather of Greenpeace.
"If governments will not tackle these lawless fleets, how can they expect to manage what is left?"
When the FAO meeting wraps up today, the IPOA will be submitted to the 24th session of FAO's Committee on Fisheries, which will meet next week. The Committee is the primary fisheries policy making forum within FAO.