Hey Congress - let's stop bottom-trawling!

That's a good point to raise in a letter....along with a number....or better yet, if it at all possible, pictures of what a coral reef looks like after one visit by a bottom trawler, 2 passes, 3 passes, etc. I think it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but getting those pictures might be unbelievably difficult. I have no idea of what might be involved, or it's cost.


Pictures do exist and there is some science out there to back them up. Off the top of my head - work by Koslow et al. off Tasmania ~2001, I have the paper (at uni), it has photos of trawled and untrawled seamounts, which includes photos of trawl damage.

Just to add something of my own, I've spent most of this year working on the diets of some Grenadier fishes. These fish were taken as bycatch from an orange roughy fishery in NZ. Orange roughy are fished (mostly nowadays) on seamounts through bottom trawling and the damage to these ecosystems is immense. The point I want to make here is that ~70% of the diet of these grenadier fish turns out to be species new to science. That's not me saying err, I don't know what this is - so it must be new; it's me sending off samples to taxonomic experts in Australasia and them saying "it's a new species, or in some cases, it's a new genus".

We are destroying stuff before we even knew what it was, what it's role in the ecosystem was, what the implications of it not being there anymore are.

Who are we to say that these species don't matter. :mad:
 
Just so I'm totally clear on this....orange roughy is only caught by bottom trawling, and most of it is taken from deep water seamounts? I would bet that very few people know that, and maybe public awareness could be raised a little bit by showing those pictures to the local fish mongers. Actually I have in mind a bit more drastic action..print them out on glossy paper with a message about devestation of the ocean's ecosystem and taping them to the case in front of the orange roughy.
 
Hi,

Yes that's pretty much true, at least in NZ waters. Orange roughy are found in many places around the world, from the north Atlantic southwards on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, down around Namibia and South Africa, across the southern parts of the Indian Ocean, the bottom of Australia, New Zealand and the southern parts of South America.

It is true that orange roughy are only caught by bottom trawling today. However, in the early days of the fishery (I should say mine, as it's become pretty clear that this kind of fishing for orange roughy is unsustainable) fishers were able to target large spawning aggregations off the bottom. These aggregations were in the shape of large plumes of almost 100% orange roughy and enabled very high catch rates. This is where the mis-information from fishers comes from: "...our nets fly above the bottom..."; this didn't happen for very long. As these spawning plumes were depleted and fishing gear became more precise (with the advent of better sonar and 'rock-hopping gear') bottom trawling on seamounts became the prefered mode of harvest for orange roughy.

I can only speak for the NZ situation but work I've read describes similar boom and bust scenarios elsewhere in the world (The orange roughy fishery off Namibia for instance). There has been a sequential stripping of seamounts in NZ waters as fishers move from seamount to seamount in search of orange roughy, always moving further and further away from NZ. It is very sad as the damage that has been done to these environments is essentially permanent in human time scales.
 
I have the pictures :oshea: sent, plus the ones from the web site, plus the ones that were on the bottom trawling website, so I have quite a few Pics that show before and after. Are there any that you know of that have been taken after just one pass? Of course there's the video, and we could send the links to those to congressmen. If they, or their staffers, would watch them it might make a big difference, but there's no guarantee that they would.
 
Thomas S1224

Finally gained access to the complete act. I tried copying and pasting the url, but it wouldn't work for some reason. To go to the Thomas site :

http://thomas.loc.gov/

You're given the option of using the number or words or phrases. Use the number, otherwise you get a ton of unrelated stuff to wade through. The number is :S1224
I haven't read the entire thing yet, (it's huge) but in Title II Habitat Management, Subtitle A-Management of Coral Habitats it dealt specifically with coral reefs, seamounts, etc. It also contains quite a bit about bottom tending mobile fishing gear. I'm not going to try to copy it, but if you're interested read as much or as little as you want.
This is our only chance for any legislative action this year, I think. I have no idea where it is in the legislative process, and can't find out until next week, but I'll try to talk with a Boxer staffer and find out. That isn't always easy if you have an out of state area code, but I'll give it a shot. I can also try email.

If any of you Californians would like to contact her offices, the url for the page that gives all that info is:

http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm#offices

More later.
 
House Subcommittee on Resources

Jurisdiction | Staff
Richard W. Pombo, California, Chairman
Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member

Don Young, Alaska George Miller, California
Jim Saxton, New Jersey Ed Markey, Massachusetts
Elton Gallegly, California Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Peter DeFazio, Oregon
Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland
Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Samoa
Ken Calvert, California
Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas
George P. Radanovich, California
Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Carolina
Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands
Chris Cannon, Utah
Ron Kind, Wisconsin
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania
Jay Inslee, Washington
Jim Gibbons, Nevada
Grace F. Napolitano, California
Greg Walden, Oregon
Tom Udall, New Mexico
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado
Mark Udall, Colorado
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona
Raúl M. Grijalva, Arizona
Jeff Flake, Arizona
Dennis Cardoza, California
Rick Renzi, Arizona Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Jim Costa, California
Henry Brown, South Carolina
Charlie Melancon, Louisiana
Thelma Drake, Virginia Dan Boren, Oklahoma
Luis Fortuno, Puerto Rico
Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota
Cathy McMorris, Washington

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana

Louie Gohmert, Texas
Marilyn Musgrave, Colorado


In time I'll get to the addresses, but they probably all have websites.
 
Interesting developments here in NZ, with a Labour/Greens coalition looking most likely!

Let's hope we get a Greens Minister of Conservation!! (This is what we voted for.)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3430356a10,00.html
Excerpt:
Labour opens the door to Greens
02 October 2005
By HELEN BAIN and IRENE CHAPPLE

A Labour-Green government could be in place within a fortnight as Prime Minister Helen Clark considers allowing Green Party ministers in a formal coalition.

Yesterday's final election result after special votes were counted gave Clark 50 seats in parliament, enough to form a minority government.

She was expected to try to run that with the Progressives' one seat, and seek support on confidence and supply from other parties outside the government.

But it now appears she may accede to the Greens' demands. Insiders say Clark is adamantly opposed to giving the Greens major portfolios such as energy or transport, where their policy differs greatly from Labour.

But she is not averse to giving them lesser Cabinet roles relating to environmental issues the price of Green support.

Clark yesterday refused to be drawn on whether she might agree to a formal coalition including the Greens, and said she was talking to all five potential coalition partners.

Greens co-leader Rod Donald said the party's preference was for a formal coalition that would give it cabinet posts.

"When the Greens supported Labour from outside government, it was like being the architect of policy but not being allowed on the building site," Donald said.

The Greens did not intend to give the government a blank cheque by giving its support without having specific policies implemented in return, Donald said.

It would seek to implement its policy highlights in energy, environment, economy, social justice, treaty issues, health and agriculture.

He expected he and Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons would meet Clark tomorrow, and he was confident of a successful outcome.

Including the Greens would not necessarily be the death knell for the government, particularly if Clark compromised by giving the Greens ministerial jobs outside Cabinet in areas such as conservation and associate transport, and brought them into the Cabinet mid-term.

"It would let the public see that the Greens aren't monsters and they can behave appropriately in government there is every chance they would perform creditably."

An injection of new blood was needed in the Cabinet and the Greens could provide that, he said. Yesterday's result meant National's party vote fell from 39.63 per cent to 39.10 per cent and it lost one seat, leaving it with 48 seats. Labour's share of the vote went from 40.74 per cent to 41.10 per cent and it held its 50 seats.

With the Greens' six seats and the Progressives' one added to Labour's 50, Clark would have 57 votes. If she could also win the Maori Party's four votes on confidence and supply, she would have enough to govern with 61. If she couldn't get Maori Party support, she could turn to NZ First.
 
Who has been in the majority since the previous election, and have they been friendly to the environment? I believe that Kat (or maybe it was a friend of mine here who spends a lot of time in NZ) said that New Zealand had very good conservation policies on land, but pretty bad in the ocean. I know they aren't good as far as protecting your waters from bottom trawlers, what about the rest of their environmental policies?
 
This waits to be seen. In general the marine environment has been disregarded, but just prior to the election the NZ Ministry of Fisheries started to make some rather public noises about fisheries impacts. There's also some rather interesting developments in the Department of Conservation here. We need an integrated ministry of marine environmental affairs, or some-such titled organisation. This may well happen yet, and happen soon.
 
It's reasonable that an island nation would pay more attention to ocean ecology than a landlocked one, or one as big as the US that has all that land to foul up first. Hopefully the Ministry of Fisheries has awakened to the fact that you can't decimate the habitat of fish and still have a viable fishing industry. Our administration is using the destruction caused by Katrina to roll back all kinds of environmental protections. :mad:
 

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