Join us on a special dive to learn about the state of EU Fisheries

Fun fish ID Eco Boat Dive over the endangered seagrass meadows followed by free buffet & showing of End of the Line film

Sun 6th June at 13.00 at International Diving Center, The Port, L’Escala

Years of intensive fishing in European waters have led to dramatic declines in once abundant fish populations. Eighty percent of assessed EU fish stocks are overfished and more than 30 per cent are outside safe biological limits.

The 2012 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is an opportunity to stop overfishing, end destructive fishing practices and deliver fair and equitable use of abundant fish stocks. OCEAN2012 is an alliance of organisations dedicated to transforming European fisheries policy and to facilitating greater participation in the reform by broadening stakeholder involvement.

European Fish Week 2010 will take place from June 5^th to 13^th. It is a unique opportunity for everybody across Europe to play their part in making this a truly fundamental reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.

OCEAN2012 member groups and friends will be organising events and activities throughout Europe, such as film screenings, panel discussions, food tastings, beachside activities and much much more. Together, we will be calling on the Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Maria Damanaki, to make environmental sustainability a prerequisite for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy. Make your voice heard!

To register for this special dive please contact gaynor@kennaecodiving.net

PLACING SUSTAINABLE ARTISANAL COASTAL FISHERIES AT THE HEART OF THE CFP REFORM

Artisanal coastal fishing activities, account for around 80% of the fleet (by vessel numbers), catch around 30% of the fish by value, and provide 65% of direct employment in European Union fisheries[1]. Artisanal coastal fishing fleets that fish in a non-intensive manner, using a range of seasonally diverse fishing methods on a range of species, have a relatively low impact on the ecosystem.

Such fisheries also generate considerable ancillary jobs; they provide the social, economic and cultural fabric that sustains many coastal communities, where they make an important contribution to food security and political, social and economic stability.

Artisanal coastal fishing, if treated fairly, managed responsibly, with well defined rights, has the potential to deliver healthy fisheries over the long-term and sustainable livelihoods.

Artisanal coastal fishing fleets are highly dependent on the grounds they exploit and operate in some of the most sensitive and biologically rich marine ecosystems. As a result they have developed a broad range of responsible management measures. If given support and provided with equal opportunities by the European Union, by national administrations and by an appropriate legal framework, building on such measures could assure sustainable fisheries as well as the conservation of valuable marine ecosystems across Europe.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as promoters of marine resources conservation, social justice and economic equity, have an important role to play in raising public awareness about the future of fish stocks and sustainable development. They seek to democratise the policy-making and decision-making processes, make institutional processes more transparent and decision-makers more accountable.

Artisanal coastal fishing interests and NGOs both tend to be under-represented in decision-making fora, where they are given less participation rights, support and consideration than other interests.

Our organisations of artisanal coastal fishers and NGOs share a common interest in placing European fisheries on a sustainable footing by supporting the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in ways which ensure the recovery of fish stocks and marine habitats where necessary, the promotion of sustainable fisheries, a just allocation of fishing access based on social and environmental criteria, and an equitable distribution of the benefits derived from these activities.

We therefore have agreed to work together on the CFP reform to achieve these objectives, and we call on the EU Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs, the EU Fisheries Ministers and the Members of the European Parliament to ensure that:

• A functional marine environment and a steady return to healthy fish stocks are achieved as a precondition for sustainable fisheries. To this end the potential of sustainable artisanal coastal fisheries for stopping overfishing, ending destructive fishing practices, and delivering fair and equitable use of healthy fish stocks is fully recognised and placed at the heart of the CFP reform.
• The CFP reform process is just, transparent and democratic by ensuring the widest participation of men and women from artisanal coastal fisheries and NGOs at all stages.
• Priority access to fish resources is provided to those who fish in the most environmentally and socially sustainable way. Long term management plans are established which apply the appropriate measures through genuine bottom-up participative co-management processes that give due weight to sustainable development.
• Fishing policies, quotas and other management systems, and fishing methods do not cause discards of biologically, nutritionally or economically important fish and other aquatic species.
• Clear conditions and protocols are established and applied to avoid conflicts between different fleets targeting shared stocks or common fishing grounds.
• Decision-making promotes good fishing practices, valorises local fisheries’ ecological and oceanographic knowledge, and promotes collaboration between fishers and scientists.
• Appropriate aid is provided through the European Fisheries Fund and other support measures for training schemes as well as for the development of effective co-management that promotes the participation of fishers, both men and women, in decision-making processes, thereby assuring their engagement in these processes.

Signatures as of April 27^th

Accionatura

Action for Fisher People’s Livelihoods

Africa Contact

African artisanal fishing organisations confederation (CAOPA)

Ailerons

APECE

Asociacion de Armadores de Artes Menores de Catalunya (ADAMEC)

Asociación de Armadores de Artes Menores de Galicia (ASOAR-ARMEGA)Birdlife International

Black Sea NGO Network

BLOOM Association

CERAD International

Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB)

Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements (CFFA)

Cofradia de Pescadores de Cedeira

Cofradía de Pescadores de Gandia

Cofradia de Pescadores de Lira

Cofradia de Pescadores de Muros

Collectif Bar Européen

CRAM Foundation

Deepwave

Ecologistas en Acción

Eko-Unia

Ent, environment and management

Federacion Galega de Redeiras Artesas

Federacion Provincial de Cofradias de Pescadores de Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Fédération Francaise d’Etudes et de Sports Sous Marins – (FFESSM)

Federation of Galician Fishermen

Finnish Association for Nature Conservation

Fundación Lonxanet para la Pesca Sostenible

GEOTA

Greenpeace

GRIS – Gruppo Ricercatori Italini sugli Squali razze e chimere

Grupo de Estudos de Ordenamento do Territorio e Ambiente

Instituto Internacional de Derecho y Medio Ambiente (IIDMA)

Integrated Fisheries Foundation

International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF)

Irish Seal Sanctuary

Irish Wildlife Trust

Irukandji Aquatik Films

Kenna EcoDiving

Legambiente Onlus

Lithuanian Fund for Nature

LPN – Liga para a Proteccao da Natureza

Marevivo

Mediterrània Centre d’Iniciatives Ecològiques

MedSharks

National Artisanal Fishermen Federation of Mauritania (FNP Artisanal)

National Association of Small Boat Owners of Iceland

NEREO

New Economics Foundation

New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association

North Sea Foundation

OCEAN2012

Oceana

Our Earth Foundation

People Uniting and Generating Aid for Development (PUGAD)

Pew Environment Group

Pro Wildlife e.V.

Probitec

Prud’homie de Pêche de Saint Raphael / Comité des Pêches du Var

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

SCIAENA – Marine Sciences and Cooperation

Seas At Risk

Shark Foundation

Sharklab

Sharklife Conservation Group

Sharkman’s World Organization

Swedish Professional Fishermen’s Association

Swedish Society for Nature Conservation

Tethys Research Institute

The Danish Society for a Living Sea

The Fisheries Secretariat

WWF European Policy Office

 

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[1] No EU wide definition of coastal artisanal fishing exists. These figures are indicative, not absolute. They were provided by DG Mare as a portrait of small-scale coastal fisheries at the Seminar on Small Scale Coastal Fisheries on February 25 2010 in Brussels. 77% of the EU fleet are under 12 metres non-trawlers; estimates based on the Annual Economic Report indicate that vessels under 12 metres provide 65% of employment and 30% of the catch by value, subject to the uncertainty of the economic data provided by Member States.

Dive The Medes Islands Secret is the title of a new Wii game based around my favourite dive sites – the Medes Islands – arguably the best diving in the Mediterranean. Just watch the video trailer for the game, showing real Medes diving footage, and I’m sure that you’ll agree:

http://www.cosmonautgames.com/DiveMedes/index.asp

What a great idea for a game! It should encourage a new wave of budding scuba divers and marine biologists. It almost makes me want to go out and buy a Wii machine. But then I’d rather go diving any day!

Remember to sign up and bookmark this blog so that you can come back and book your next diving trip to experience the Medes Islands for real! For more information on diving the Medes Islands marine reserve, to book scuba diving holidays and the link to EcoDive volunteering visit: www.kennaecodiving.net

Parties overturn Committee decision to list porbeagle sharks under CITES Appendices and confirm rejection of similar action for hammerhead, oceanic whitetip, and spiny dogfish sharks

Doha, Qatar – 25 March, 2010: Today, in their final Plenary session, Parties to the Convention for the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted narrowly to reverse a previous Committee decision to monitor and regulate trade in the porbeagle shark and confirmed Committee rejection of similar proposals for the hammerhead, spiny dogfish, and oceanic whitetip shark.
 
“Today’s backsliding on porbeagle protection by the CITES Parties is deeply regrettable as are their previous decisions to reject trade safeguards for similarly threatened hammerheads, spiny dogfish and oceanic whitetip sharks,” said Heike Zidowitz, President of Europe’s leading association of shark scientists and the head of the Shark Alliance delegation to the CITES Conference. “These failures leave some of the oceans’ most vulnerable and heavily traded species at great risk from unregulated, international trade.”
 
The proposals to list porbeagle and spiny dogfish under CITES Appendix II were developed by the European Union while the United States proposed similar action for hammerheads and oceanic whitetip sharks.  The Pacific island nation of Palau co-sponsored all four proposals.  A two-thirds majority of votes is required for the adoption of such CITES proposals.
 
“Despite the setbacks, the CITES Conference debates have served to highlight the urgent plight of sharks and increase recognition of the role that CITES can play in their conservation,” added Zidowitz. “The member groups of the Shark Alliance will continue to promote CITES action along with science-based fishing limits as key elements of comprehensive shark conservation programs.”
 
The high demand for shark fins is a major threat to hammerhead and oceanic whitetip sharks while porbeagles and spiny dogfish are sought primarily to satisfy European demand for their meat.  
 
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), all the shark species proposed for CITES listing are classified as Globally Threatened under the IUCN Red List and meet the criteria for listing under CITES Appendix II.
 
Appendix II listings result in requirements for export permits and determinations that trade in a species is legal and not detrimental to the species’ survival.

Wonderful photos from the making of Ocean movie:

http://www.coml.org/comlfiles/press/GalateeBrochure_14January2010.pdf

This clever little octopus has learned to compensate for the lack of an external shell: http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 1/hi/sci/ tech/8408233. stm

The process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction

In the babbling Babel of 24/7 news – where elections, bailouts and beheadings blur into one long shriek – the slow-motion stories that will define our age are often lost. An extraordinary documentary released next week, The End of the Line, forces us to stop, and see. Its story is stark. In my parents’ lifetime, we have killed 90 per cent of the world’s fish. In my lifetime, we will finish off the rest – unless we change our ways, fast. We are on course to be the people who wiped fish from the earth.

The story begins in the sleepy Canadian resort of Newfoundland. It was the global capital of cod, a fishing town where the scaly creatures of the sea were so abundant they could be caught with your hands. But in the 1980s, something strange happened. The catches started to wane. The fish grew smaller. And then, in 1991, they disappeared.

It turned out the cod had been hoovered out of the sea at such a rapid rate that they couldn’t reproduce themselves. But the postscript is spookier still. The Canadian government banned any attempts at fishing there, on the assumption that the few remaining fish would slowly repopulate the waters. But 15 years on, they haven’t. The population was so destroyed that it could never recover.

A growing number of scientists are warning that we could all be living in Newfoundland soon. Professor Boris Worm of Dalhousie University published a detailed study in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature saying that at the current rate, all global fish populations will have collapsed by 2048. He says: “This isn’t some horror scenario, it’s a real possibility. It’s not rocket science if we’re depleting species after species. It’s a finite resource. We’ll reach a point where we run out.”

The species in the frontline is bluefin tuna, the pinnacle of the evolutionary chain for fish. This little creature can swim at 50mph, and accelerate faster than the swishest sports car. It has even developed warm blood. Yet every year, a third of the remaining population is ripped from the seas and slapped onto our plates. Soon, it will be gone.

All over the world, from the Bay of Bengal to Lake Victoria to the shores of South America, I have heard fishermen say their catches are shrinking, in size and in number. Industrial-scale fishing only began in the 1950s. By the standards of the news cycle, this is slow – but by the standards of the planet or of settled fishing communities, this is a click of the fingers. The effects of the new industrial fishing are uniform. Professor Ransom Myers found that whenever the vast industrial trawlers are sent in, it takes just 15 years to reduce the fish population to a 10% shadow of its former self.

This process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction, ripping up everything in its path. Charles Clover, who wrote the book on which the documentary is based, has a good analogy for it. Imagine a band of hunters stringing a mile of net between two massive all-terrain vehicles and dragging it at speed across the plains of Africa. Imagine it scooping up everything in its way: lions and cheetahs and hippos and wild dogs. The net has a massive metal roller attached to its leading edge, smashing down every tree that gets in its way. And in the end, when the hunters open up the net, they pick out the choicest creatures and dump the squashed remains in the sun as carrion for the vultures.

But we need fish. Our brains don’t form properly without their fatty Omega-3 acids. So why do our governments allow this process of destruction to continue? Why do they actively encourage it, with $14bn of subsidies for fishermen to keep on trawling every year?

A small number of people are making a lot of short-term profit out of this destruction – and they are using this cash to ensure they can carry on hunting, down to the last fish. In 1992, an attempt to get the bluefin tuna listed as an endangered species was scuppered by the US and Japanese governments at the urging of the tuna lobby – who happen to give large campaign donations to all parties. A similar corruption has eaten into European politics.

Add to this the fact that fishermen are a determined and demanding constituency with an equally short-term agenda. They demand the maximum quotas today – even if that means no quotas tomorrow.

Our societies are structured to put these short-term cries for money for a few ahead of the long-term needs of us all. A small determined group with hard cash almost always beats a diffuse group with good intentions – until they get angry and fight back.

Yet today, ordinary people in rich countries are being insulated from the fish crisis. As we exhaust our own fish stocks, our corporations are sailing out across the world to steal them from the poor. Today, there are armadas of industrial European and American fishing boats across the coast of West Africa, leaving the small fishermen who live on its coasts to starve. Professor Daniel Pauly says: “It is like a hole burning through paper. As the hole expands, the edge is where the fisheries concentrate, until there is nowhere left to go.”

We are not only stealing fish from Africans; we are stealing them from future generations. In the age of limits, we are hitting up against the capacity of the planet to provide for us – yet we are reacting with blank denial. This story is unfolding, in one form or another, in the rainforests, the air, and in the planet’s climate itself.

It has left us at a strange crossroads. We will either be a despised generation who left behind a depleted husk-planet – or a heroic generation who, at five minutes to ecological midnight, turned back to the light.

With fish, the solution is even simpler and more straightforward than with the other ecological crises ensnaring us. The scientific experts say we need to follow two steps. First, expand the 0.6 per cent of the area of the world’s oceans in which fishing is banned to 30 per cent. In these protected areas, fish can slowly recover. Second, in the remaining 70 per cent, impose strict quotas on fishermen and police it properly, as they do in Alaska, New Zealand and Iceland.

The cost of this programme? $14bn a year – precisely the sum we currently spend on subsidising fishermen. At no extra cost, we could turn them from the rapists of the oceans into their guardians.

Yet The End of the Line has one flaw – and it is one that riddles current environmental thought. It presents us with a great earth-altering crisis, and then says our primary response should be to change our own personal consumption habits. It urges people not to buy from Nobu, which shamefully still sells bluefin tuna, and to ask if the fish we buy is sustainably produced. It’s like the end of An Inconvenient Truth, where the primary response Al Gore presses on us is to shop green and change our lightblubs.

Of course this is valuable – but it is only an anemic and minor first step. It is rather like, in 1937, reacting to the rise of Nazism by urging people to make sure that they personally weren’t killing any Jews or gays or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or buying from any Nazi-owned companies. We needed collective action that would stop other people from killing these minorities – just as today we need collective action that prevents anyone from irreparably trashing the means of life.

At the moment, many good people get anxious about environmental issues, and hear the message that The Response is to scrub their own lifestyle clean. Yet individual voluntary action by a minority of nice people will not save the bluefin tuna, never mind the ecosystem. But if all these honourable people act together – by volunteering for, and donating to, organizations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Plane Stupid – they can change the law, so everybody will be required to change their behaviour, not just a benevolent 10 per cent. It was just such determined minorities armed with the facts that spurred the fights against slavery, colonialism and fascism. When you respond as a consumer, you are weak; when you respond as a citizen, you are strong.

The voice of millions of people can drown out the concentrated power of the fishing industry – and all the other industries with a vested interest in trashing our planet – but not with the swipe of a credit card.

The alternative to collective action today is catastrophe tomorrow. As Charles Clover explains: “When the human population comes under pressure on land because of global warming, when we are running out of ways to feed ourselves, we [will] have just squandered one of the greatest resources on the planet – wild fish.” The epitaph for the human species would turn out to have been scripted by Douglas Adams: so long, and thanks for all the fish.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

01-Jun-09  BONN, GERMANY – Climate change is turning the oceans more acid in a trend that could endanger everything from clams to coral and be irreversible for thousands of years, national science academies said on Monday.

Seventy academies from around the world urged governments meeting in Bonn for climate talks from June 1-12 to take more account of risks to the oceans in a new UN treaty for fighting global warming due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

“To avoid substantial damage to ocean ecosystems, deep and rapid reductions of carbon dioxide emissions of at least 50 percent (below 1990 levels) by 2050, and much more thereafter, are needed,” the academies said in a joint statement.

The academies said rising amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted mainly by human use of fossil fuels, were being absorbed by the oceans and making it harder for creatures to build protective body parts. The shift disrupts ocean chemistry and attacks the “building blocks needed by many marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures”, it said.

On some projections, levels of acidification in 80 percent of Arctic seas would be corrosive to clams that are vital to the food web by 2060, and “coral reefs may be dissolving globally,”  if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were to rise to 550 parts per million (ppm) from a current 387 ppm.  “These changes in ocean chemistry are irreversible for many thousands of years, and the biological consequences could last much longer” .

The warning was issued by the Inter-Academy Panel, representing science academies of countries from Albania to Zimbabwe and including those of Australia, Britain, France, Japan and the United States.

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, the British science academy, said there may be an “underwater catastrophe”. “The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging the local economies that may be least able to tolerate it,” he said.

The academies’ statement said that, if current rates of carbon emissions continue until 2050, computer models indicate that “the oceans will be more acidic than they have been for tens of millions of years”. It also urged actions to reduce other pressures on the oceans, such as pollution and over-fishing.

I’m so glad that we EcoDivers aren’t searching for seahorses this small!!!

Museum Victoria / Photo by Rudie Kuiter

This tiny seahorse, Hippocampus satomiae, grows no bigger than a pea, with a length of just over half an inch (13.8mm) and an approximate height of 0.45ins(11.5mm). This pygmy species was found near Derawan island off Kalimantan in Indonesia and is named after the diver, Satomi Onishi, who collected the samples.

Come and join the Seahorse Race in the Mediterranean Sea. There are just a few places left for this summer! Just follow the Marine Biology & EcoDiving link on the left.