RSPB - Save the Albatross
Created | Updated Dec 10, 2003
Pirate Fishing and Seabird By-catch
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - International officials have set up a five-nation task force to tackle the growing problem of pirate fishers poaching the fish stocks of the world's oceans, a senior European development expert said Tuesday 2 December, 2003.
The rape and pillage of the high seas needs practicable solutions by experts, and that's what we hope to achieve.
Quoting Simon Upton - former NZ environment minister; currently chairman of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Round Table on Sustainable Development.
Upton was addressing delegates from 30 countries at the 'Deep Sea 2003' conference in NZ. The task force, set up by OECD, will be led by British Environment Minister Elliot Morley. Its other members are fisheries ministers from New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and Namibia. Illegal fishers could be poaching the equivalent of '100 percent, or even more than 100 percent of the legal catch' in some areas, Upton said. He said the fishing pirates deplete stocks in one area and then move to another.
If you intervene in one place, those boats go somewhere else. The problem is worsening because there's never been a way to enforce fishing rules globally.
The five-nation task force will 'put up in neon lights what could be done, what should be done,' he said. The group will draw up its plans for solutions over the next 18 months to two years. Scientists, legal experts, environmental groups, and business people would be asked to contribute to the project.
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