Coral concerns spur vast trawling ban
Commercial fishing nets that drag the sea floor will be banned from more than a half-million square miles of ocean near the Aleutian Islands under a government plan to protect the deep-water corals and sponges that help nurse Alaska’s fishing grounds.
In what easily will be the largest trawl-fishing ban in the United States, the governing body that oversees commercial fishing in the North Pacific yesterday proposed a whole new approach to protecting the rocky, colorful seafloor habitat. Scientists believe the coral may help incubate a fertile fishing area that helps supply a significant portion of U.S. seafood.
Coming shortly after two scientific panels proclaimed the world’s seas were in ecological trouble, the decision signals a shift in thinking about how to manage oceans, and puts new pressure on the bodies that oversee fishing in Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coast waters to follow suit.
“It’s a whole new paradigm,” said bottom-trawl fisherman David Fraser, who lives in Port Townsend and fishes in Alaska. “It’s not unusual for Alaska to set the gold standard for the rest of the regions around the country.”
Yesterday’s decision by the members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council is deceptive in its simplicity.
Typically, entire oceans are open to fishing except in areas that have been specifically set aside to protect sea lions or rare birds, or to rebuild fallen crab stocks, for example. In this case, the council took the opposite approach: It recommended outlawing bottom-trawling everywhere in the Aleutians — except on the roughly 25,000 square miles of seas where boats fish today, minus a few coral-rich areas that already are off limits.
Continue reading this story from the Seattle Times:
Coral concerns spur vast trawling ban