Aotearoa New Zealand spent years spearheading the introduction of a new set of rules governing bottom trawling in the South Pacific Ocean, which more than a dozen countries adopted by consensus in 2023. But under a new government, the country has now blocked an effort to fully implement those rules. Australia and the United States put forward a proposal to fully enact the 2023 rules at the annual meeting of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO), held Feb. 17-21 in Santiago, Chile. This would protect a minimum of 70% of species or groups of species that indicate the presence of vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs). In so doing it would reduce the area open to trawling, a fishing practice that disrupts the seabed, by about 45%. However, the two countries deferred the measure to next year “with reluctance” due to the resistance from New Zealand, the only country whose vessels have bottom trawled in the SPRFMO’s regulatory area in recent years. Conservationists lambasted New Zealand’s move to block the measure. “While other SPRFMO members reaffirmed their strong support for the implementation of agreed measures to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems, New Zealand took a position that defies science, weakens our confidence in the implementation of international commitments, and leaves some of the planet’s most fragile and biodiverse marine ecosystems at risk,” Bronwen Golder, director of the deep-sea fisheries seamounts campaign at the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), an umbrella group of NGOs, said in a statement. In other news from…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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