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European Parliament approves ban on deep-sea fishing below 800 meters

Xinhua, December 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

The European Parliament backed a ban here on Tuesday on deep-sea fishing below 800 meters in the North-East Atlantic, in a move to protect fragile marine ecosystems on the deep sea bed.

The new rules will make it illegal to fish in the North-East Atlantic below 800 meters. This ban, which was endorsed in a plenary session of the European Parliament, will affect the practice of bottom trawling, which often destroys sea bed habitats and has been listed by the European Environment Agency as one of the unregulated activities endangering the biodiversity of this region.

Separate provisions will also protect designated vulnerable marine systems (VMEs) at depths below 400 meters, with additional controls on fishing vessels that catch above preset amounts of VME indicator species.

"This deep-sea fishing regulation is highly symbolic. Deep-sea fishing is an economic activity which, besides its social function of providing jobs, also provides food and it has a strong environmental impact", said rapporteur Isabelle Thomas. "We have won an agreement tailored to our priorities and all its aims", she added.

Ongoing deep-sea fishing will also be restricted by the new rules to the areas where it was allowed from 2009-2011, though this will only apply to vessels targeting deep-sea species; i.e. those vessels whose catches are made up of more than 8 percent by deep-sea species in at least one fishing trip per year.

Members of European Parliament (MEPs) also inserted stronger safeguards for transparency, including further obligations to provide public information on European Union (EU) vessels targeting deep-sea species and reporting on all catches.

Limits on the reliability of data collection have proven a problem, and so there will also be tougher checks at sea, with 20 percent of EU vessels needing a scientific observer on board to oversee the timely and accurate collection of data.

The EU fishing fleet made catches representing approximately 5.1 million tons, according to figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistical office. The industry, however, while subsidized by the EU, contributed less than 0.03 percent to the EU GDP in 2011, with low contributions to national GDPs of EU member states as well. Endite