Ban Urged on Deep-Sea Fishing Subsidies

A range of deep-sea creatures is at risk of severe damage or extinction unless a handful of governments end their fuel subsidies for trawling fleets, scientists said at a AAAS news briefing.

Mark Henderson, science editor of The Australian, reported that "industrial fishing operations are devastating marine species and reef habitats that have taken centuries to grow." Most of the subsidies, he wrote, come from four countries: Japan, Russia, South Korea and Spain.

"The technologically advanced fleets are moving from place to place, fishing areas to extinction before moving on," wrote James Randerson, science correspondent for The Guardian.

Both stories said that without the government subsidies, the fleets would lose millions of dollars a year.

"There is surely a better way for governments to spend money than by paying subsidies to a fleet that burns 1.1bn litres of fuel annually to maintain paltry catches of old growth fish from highly vulnerable stocks," Daniel Pauly, at the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre, said in The Guardian.

20 February 2007