Limits set for bottom trawlers

2008-08-25 21:21

Anchorage, Alaska - Large areas of the Bering Sea off Alaska's coast will soon be off-limits to bottom trawling, a practice involving fishing vessels that drag huge, weighted nets across the ocean floor.

From Monday, nearly 466 200km² of the Bering Sea will be closed to bottom trawling, bringing the total in the Pacific Ocean to 2.1 million square kilometres - an area more than five times the size of California.

Other newly restricted areas are off Washington, Oregon and California.

'Similar to forest clear-cutting'

Conservation groups have long fought the practice of bottom trawling, calling it an outdated form of fishing that pulverizes delicate corals and sponges living on the sea floor.

Scientists say it can take centuries for the slow-growing corals and sponges to recover, if they ever do, after bottom trawlers move through an area.

"It basically is taking a net and raking it on the bottom, and anything that sticks up from the bottom gets bulldozed over. It is similar to forest clear-cutting," Chris Krenz, Oceana's arctic project manager, said on Friday.

In the northern Bering Sea, many animals rely on the crabs and clams that grow on the ocean floor for food, Krenz said.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which advises the federal government on fisheries, unanimously voted in favour of the northern Bering Sea regulation in June.

Jim Ayers, vice president of Oceana, said the regulation essentially puts the northern Bering Sea off-limits to bottom trawlers. The fishing vessels had not been consistently venturing into the area but were starting to, he said.

Ayers said the effects of climate change in the Bering Sea, combined with bottom trawling, could have devastated essential fish habitat.

World's most critically endangered whale

According to Oceana, the Bering Sea has 26 species of marine mammals, including the North Pacific right whale, believed to be the most critically endangered whale in the world.

Blue, humpback, gray and bowhead whales also travel each year through the Bering Sea, which is a magnet for millions of seabirds who migrate each spring and summer to breed.

The Groundfish Forum, a trade association of six trawling companies that fish in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, said the regulation, while alright for now, could end up harming the industry.

"Should the concentrations of fish move to the north, it actually could be harmful to keep us from going where the fish are," said Lori Swanson, the forum's executive director.

It could mean fishing longer, keeping the nets on the bottom more, using more fuel and potentially increasing the number of by catch, the non-targeted fish that are caught in the nets, Swanson said.

- AP