No-go fishing areas only hope, say scientists

LONDON - Vast fishing no-go zones are needed to save the world's marine ecosystems from irreparable harm, say British scientists.

After climate change, scientists consider the wrecking of the seas - an unseen, largely unheeded crisis - the world's gravest environmental problem.

Such destruction has been caused by over-fishing in the marine environment and only huge protected zones, where all fishing is banned, will allow the sea's damaged areas to recover, say members of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

These non-fishing reserves should cover fully 30 per cent of British territorial waters, the commission suggested, in the most drastic call ever made to scale back fishing in Britain or Europe.

The proposals were welcomed by environmentalists but attacked by some fishing industry groups, who said they would threaten yet more livelihoods, and that recovery measures had already been taken.

But the commission, representing some of the country's most senior environmental scientists, was insistent.

It is not just the question of plunging fish stocks, critical though many of these are, it says in a new report; rather, the concern is for the whole marine ecosystem, with seabirds, dolphins and porpoises killed in their thousands, smaller marine organisms wiped out and the seabed comprehensively destroyed by trawling over vast distances.

The report, Turning The Tide, calls on people and policymakers everywhere to recognise the real scale of the problem: that decades of competitive fishing have put the whole marine ecosystem under siege.

The central point is that it is the ecosystem, and not just threatened individual fish stocks, such as cod or haddock, that needs looking after.

The commission's members call for a simple but profound policy change: the "presumption in favour of fishing" should be reversed. Until now, fishing has been allowed anywhere unless the regulating authorities can demonstrate that harm is being done to ecosystems or habitats.

But this has not prevented severe ecosystem damage, the commission reports, saying that it should be for fishing interests to demonstrate that their activities will not cause harm. There should be spatial planning in the sea just as there is on land, it says.

Sir Tom Blundell, the commission's chairman and a professor of chemistry at Cambridge University, said: "It is hard to imagine that we would tolerate a similar scale of destruction on land, but because it happens at sea, the damage is largely hidden. On land, we have had a planning system for over 50 years to ... set aside areas for protection.

"Unless similar steps are taken at sea to allow recovery from decades of intensive fishing, species may disappear and the ecosystem itself be put in danger."

The report concludes that fishing is a threat to the seas, not only around the UK, but globally, and sets out a litany of the destruction that has been caused.

Populations of more than 40 per cent of commercial fish species in the northeast Atlantic and neighbouring seas are below sustainable limits. Large quantities of unmarketable fish - in some cases up to 50 per cent of the catch - are discarded at sea.

Thousands of seabirds and marine mammals such as dolphins and porpoises are killed, getting tangled and drowning in nets or caught on the hooks of long-line fishing gear.

The seabed has been destroyed over vast areas in the North Sea and other seas, and the myriad organisms that live there wiped out by beam-trawling, in which heavy gear is dragged along the bottom.

Substantial marine nature reserves, off-limits to fishing boats, must now be the way out, the commission says. Britain is committed to setting up marine reserves over the next decade, but the call for 30 per cent of UK waters to be included is the first time anyone has put a precise number on the project.

George McRae, the secretary of the Scottish White Fish Producers Association, said: "There are 20,000km of oil pipelines in the North Sea and on top of that there are oil platforms and rigs and all sorts of legitimate industrial activity, which have had a huge impact on the environment. I haven't heard any suggestion that these should be curtailed in any way."

Commission members accept that their recommendations are one thing, but getting them agreed by the European Commission in Brussels is another.

The impact of fishing

* A British study has found populations of more than 40 per cent of commercial fish species in the northeast Atlantic and neighbouring seas are below sustainable limits.

* Thousands of seabirds and marine mammals such as dolphins and porpoises are killed, getting tangled and drowning in nets or caught on the hooks of long-line fishing gear.

* The seabed has been destroyed over vast areas in the North Sea by dragging heavy fishing gear on the sea floor.

- INDEPENDENT