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United Nations, New York. UN fisheries negotiations to secure genuine global protection for highly vulnerable deep-sea habitats ended in a stalemate early this morning, after Iceland blocked a last ditch compromise deal.  Many countries around the world, including the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany and Pacific Island states had pushed for a global moratorium on the highly destructive practice of unregulated bottom trawling on the high seas. Although this move was thwarted by powerful fishing nations such as Spain, Japan and Canada, even these countries accepted a compromise deal that would still have offered considerable protection to the most vulnerable habitats such as cold-water coral reefs and seamounts. However, even this deal could not be completed as Iceland pushed for the right to continue destroying deepwater habitats everywhere – signalling a green light for the destruction of one of the last frontiers on earth.

“Iceland should be called to account for encouraging the continued plundering of deep-sea resources, ” said Dr Bryce Beukers-Stewart, Fisheries Policy Officer with the Marine Conservation Society. “Not content with blowing the international moratorium on whaling out of the water recently, they have now scuppered plans to protect the deep-sea, an area where coral reefs may be thousands of years old and fish like Orange Roughy may live for nearly 200”.  The deep-sea is one of the most easily damaged environments in our oceans, and may never recover from exploitation. This irresponsible action also comes on the back of a recent study in the highly acclaimed journal Science, showing that if we don’t change the way our oceans are managed the world’s commercial fisheries will have collapsed by 2048.

The UK’s fisheries minister, Ben Bradshaw, has been a key spokesman for the better global protection of deepwater fish and habitats recently, both at the United Nations and closer to home. However, the last week has seen a series of compromise deals on management measures for the deep sea, not only at the United Nations, but also in the North-east Atlantic. At the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission’s (NEAFC) annual meeting last week the toughest measures were rejected by a handful of self interested fishing nations. Likewise, despite overwhelming scientific evidence from ICES that European stocks of Orange Roughy, Blue Ling and Deepwater sharks could only be saved if these fisheries were shut down immediately, the European Commission only agreed to phase them out over four to five years.

“We had been hoping the amazing creatures and habitats of the deep-sea would get an early Christmas present this week” said Dr Bryce Beukers-Stewart, “but once again, short-term political and economic interests have over-ridden commonsense”. A wider package of global measures for sustainable fisheries management are due to be adopted by the United Nations on December 7th. “Lets just hope there is still room to manoeuvre and protect our oceans for both present and future generations,” continued Dr Beukers-Stewart.

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