A tide of plunder in the Southern Ocean

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    Sunset over the Southern Ocean.Credit: Dr Sylvia Earle



    Drawing of a Patagonian toothfish.






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    By Someshwar Singh
    The Patagonian toothfish is a relative newcomer to the global fishing industry, yet already it has been exploited almost to the point of commercial extinction. And some of the worst offenders come from countries that have pledged to protect their marine resources.

    Gland, Switzerland: It is a familiar story — yet another fishery is about to collapse. This time it is the Patagonian toothfish, known as Chilean sea bass in the United States and Europe and in Japan by the name of mero. What makes the toothfish saga more poignant is the fact that this species, taken from as deep as 9,000 feet, has only recently been discovered by the fishing industry.

    The bad news for toothfish was confirmed at a recent meeting of the 28-nation Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which ended this month in Hobart, Australia. Fishing industry sources indicated that it is no longer commercially viable to seek toothfish in South African waters because stocks have been severely depleted by poaching.

    In the past year the pirate catch of Patagonian toothfish has significantly exceeded the legal catch allowed by CCAMLR and national governments. Scientists predict that if illegal and unregulated fishing continues, the Patagonian toothfish will be commercially extinct within the next two to three years.

    "In just two years South Africa's Patagonian toothfish industry has shown evidence of severe declines," says Margaret Moore of the international conservation organization, WWF-Australia. "The fish pirates are decimating the Southern Ocean and driving the toothfish towards extinction."

    Moore believes that the threats to the Southern Oceans are urgent, with the pirates' swathe of destruction moving eastward from South African waters towards Australia and New Zealand.

    An extremely slow-growing species, the Patagonian toothfish can live more than 50 years and reach two metres in length, but most of the fish now being caught have not reached half that length. Toothfish once commanded prices as high as US$7,000 a ton, but with pirate catches flooding the market, prices have slumped to less than half the levels of just three years ago.

    CCAMLR is under great pressure to take a tough stand against toothfish poachers. However, like many other international bodies, it operates by consensus and among the worst poachers are Chile and Norway — both CCAMLR members.

    Mauritius, which is not a member of CCAMLR, is central to the toothfish trade, according to ISOFISH (the International Southern Oceans Longline Fisheries Information Clearing House). Having just published a report on Norwegian involvement in poaching, ISOFISH is preparing another report that focuses on the Chilean, Argentinean, and Spanish poachers.

    WWF and the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) expected CCAMLR to support a three-point initiative to stop illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean. This included a mandatory vessel monitoring system, denial of port access to illegal fishing vessels and a ban on all international trade in illegally caught Patagonian toothfish.

    However, CCAMLR failed to adopt port and market controls to stop toothfish poachers from profiting illegally. The burden of saving toothfish will now have to be passed on to the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). As if this was not enough, CCAMLR continues to expand fisheries for toothfish throughout the Southern Ocean. Catch quotas for licenced fishers are still being set on the assumption that poaching will be stopped immediately.

    "Ten times the amount of toothfish comes out of the water illegally as the legal fishery accounts for," says Michael Sutton, Director of WWF's Endangered Seas Campaign. "The situation is clearly worse than we thought it was. The Patagonian toothfish has become a test case for CCAMLR. It is disappointing to see governments did not seize the chance to prevent toothfish from becoming commercially extinct."

    WWF believes that unless deep sea fleets are brought under an effective international system of management and control — and soon — species like the toothfish will continue their drastic decline, a decline that threatens not just individual species but the whole marine environment.

    The solution may lie in more effective controls at ports and in the markets, rather than in policing the vast oceans where even the largest of naval fleets could prove too small to catch the thieves.

    (698 words)

    *Someshwar Singh is a Press Officer with WWF International in Gland