Word: deeps
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Only the biodiversity of tropical rainforests rivals that of the deep sea - our planet's largest wilderness - an aquatic wonderland that is now being systematically razed by what is likely the world's most environmentally destructive business. The fishing occurs mostly around the ocean's most unique topographical formations - submarine canyons, mid-oceanic ridges and tens of thousands of seamounts (most are extinct volcanoes) - which support a stunning profusion of endemic species, many of which are yet to be discovered. Trawlers reduce these habitats to rubble in minutes, undermining the viability of the very fish that brought the vessels there...
...quota for their home country's fishing area, known as an exclusive economic zone. At the same time, demand keeps rising in wealthy countries for nutritious, and delicious, white-fish meat from species that have become increasingly hard to find closer to shore. "All fisheries are turning gradually into deep-sea fisheries because they have fished themselves out of the shallow waters," says Robert Steneck, a marine ecologist at the University of Maine. "The solution is not going into the deep sea, but better managing the shallow waters, where fish live fast and die young but where the ecosystems have...
...Industrial fisheries are now going thousands of miles, thousands of feet deep and catching things that live hundreds of years in the least protected place on Earth. They are roving bandits using state of the art technologies to plunder," says Elliott Norse, president of Marine Conservation Biology Institute...
...nations - including Japan, South Korea, Russia, Iceland, Spain, France and the Ukraine - according to new research conducted by the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre. The subsidies defray substantial fuel costs - trawlers need a lot of power to move nets that weigh 15 tons and stretch a mile deep - keeping these boats working around the clock for weeks and months, mining the deep sea (it takes about four hours to fish...
...these subsidies in the bud before more interests get barnacled around them," says University of British Columbia's Rashid Sumaila, who has advised the World Trade Organization on the issue. "Eliminating them would render these fleets economically unviable and would relieve tremendous pressure on over-fishing and vulnerable deep-sea ecosystems...