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12-06-2005, West Norfolk Ridge, Tasman Sea: A 400 year old Paragorgia coral being hauled aboard the New Zealand bottom trawler Waipori.
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Bottom trawl nets are enormous.
The biggest bottom trawl nets that hit the sea floor have mouths as wide as the length of a rugby field and are three storeys high.
Weighted across the bottom with heavy steel rollers that indiscriminately smash and crush corals, they swallow everything in their path.
To apply the same method on land would be like dragging a massive net across entire fields, cities and forests in the hope of catching a few cows.
Basically it’s crazy.
Armed with acoustic fish-finders and satellite technology, bottom trawling is now happening at greater depths than ever before around New Zealand and around the world.
When hauled onboard, ever-decreasing tonnages of over-exploited orange roughy and oreo spill across the deck, and so too does the trawl 'trash'.
This unwanted bycatch includes the endangered deep-sea reef-forming black coral, threatened species like giant mussels and clams, barnacles and octopus.
No one knows how long it takes for these communities to recover, or even if they can. Very little is known of deep-sea fish biology, but it is all too apparent that the fish populations, like the ecosystem, are collapsing.
Some New Zealand populations of orange roughy are now estimated to be only three percent of their original size.
Since exploratory deep-sea fishing began in the 1970s, the New Zealand fishing industry has been at the forefront of deep sea fishing.
With local New Zealand waters now depleted of commercially viable fish stocks they have moved on to more lucrative grounds.
New Zealand companies are still bottom trawling in international waters, where no rules govern their fishing. They have traveled as far as South Africa, Europe and the Azores in their tireless quest.
Kiwi companies like Amaltal, lead the world in this deep sea destruction.
90% of the bottom trawlers in the Tasman Sea and South Pacific Ocean during 2006 were flagged to New Zealand.
The biggest bottom trawl nets that hit the sea floor have mouths as wide as the length of a rugby field and are three storeys high.
Weighted across the bottom with heavy steel rollers that indiscriminately smash and crush corals, they swallow everything in their path.
To apply the same method on land would be like dragging a massive net across entire fields, cities and forests in the hope of catching a few cows.
Basically it’s crazy.
Armed with acoustic fish-finders and satellite technology, bottom trawling is now happening at greater depths than ever before around New Zealand and around the world.
12-06-2005, West Norfolk Ridge, Tasman Sea: Crew on New Zealand bottom trawler Waipori wrestle with a large piece of 400 year old Paragorgia coral hauled up from the deep-sea.
This unwanted bycatch includes the endangered deep-sea reef-forming black coral, threatened species like giant mussels and clams, barnacles and octopus.
No one knows how long it takes for these communities to recover, or even if they can. Very little is known of deep-sea fish biology, but it is all too apparent that the fish populations, like the ecosystem, are collapsing.
Some New Zealand populations of orange roughy are now estimated to be only three percent of their original size.
New Zealand - World Leaders in Destruction
On 12 June, 2005, Greenpeace documented a bottom trawler throwing snared endangered coral back overboard.
With local New Zealand waters now depleted of commercially viable fish stocks they have moved on to more lucrative grounds.
New Zealand companies are still bottom trawling in international waters, where no rules govern their fishing. They have traveled as far as South Africa, Europe and the Azores in their tireless quest.
Kiwi companies like Amaltal, lead the world in this deep sea destruction.
90% of the bottom trawlers in the Tasman Sea and South Pacific Ocean during 2006 were flagged to New Zealand.
