The failure of some governments to regulate the activities of their fishing fleets in international waters means new ways must be found to manage and protect the biological diversity of the high seas, a coalition of marine participants said on Tuesday at the fifth World Parks Congress in Durban.
Briefing the media at the port city’s International Convention Centre, the venue for the congress, the World Wide Fund for Nature International’s endangered-seas programme director Simon Cripps said the high seas have become the ”Wild West of the world”.
More and more vessels were chasing fewer and fewer fish across huge areas of ocean over which there is little or no governance.
Almost two-thirds of the world’s oceans fall outside any national jurisdiction and are beyond the ability of any single nation to manage or protect, he said.
In a document released at the briefing, the coalition is calling for the adoption, by the congress, of a strategy aimed at establishing ”a global representative system of high seas marine protected areas”.
This would build on the existing legal framework, set forth in the United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea, to develop a high-seas legal management and conservation framework.
Currently, no international legal regime exists for the overall protection of the high seas.
The coalition said establishing this was urgent due to ”expanding high seas and deep-ocean fisheries that are targeting long-lived fish species that dwell on extremely fragile habitats”.
Among the most tragic examples were species that lived on and around seamounts, areas of the ocean where the seabed rises up to relatively shallow depths below the surface.
”In many areas, seamount fisheries are entirely unregulated,” it says.
”In addition, regional fisheries’ organisations have been slow to adopt precautionary measures, or to implement by-catch limitations and habitat conservation zones to protect non-target species such as sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, invertebrates, other fishes and associated eco-systems.”
World Conservation Union global marine programme head Carl Lundin said what was happening on the high seas was ”driven by greed and opportunity”.
The coalition is spearheaded by the World Conservation Union’s world commission on protected areas, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. — Sapa