New Zealand has indicated it wants to continue scraping the seafloor with nets in vulnerable marine areas at an intergovernmental meeting, WWF has claimed.

The country is set to argue against increased ocean protection for vulnerable habitats at the annual meeting of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (SPRFMO) this week in Ecuador, WWF-New Zealand said in a press release.

“Once again New Zealand is standing on the international stage and pushing for destructive bottom trawling to continue unchecked in the South Pacific, lobbying against more protection for fragile deep sea corals,” said Karli Thomas, Pacific seamounts campaign lead with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC).

New Zealand’s environmental department has not yet spoken out on the topic and Carbon Pulse has requested comment.

WWF and DSCC made their announcements based on an observation that New Zealand failed to submit new boundaries for bottom trawling management areas to the SPRFMO meeting, they said.

SPRFMO agreed to protect at least 70% of high-biodiversity areas, leaving 30% open to industry, from 2024. The 15 members of the conservation-focused organisation include China, the US, and the EU.

However, New Zealand is “actively” working against this proposal, WWF claimed. New Zealand is the only country still bottom trawling seamounts – high-biodiversity underwater mountains – in the South Pacific, DSCC said.

The SPRFMO meeting is taking place in Manta, Ecuador this week from Monday to Friday, with the schedule covering issues including jack mackerel allocations.

Some regional fisheries management organisations have made progress on implementing UN member states’ commitment to protecting vulnerable marine ecosystems from fishing. However, SPRFMO has been “slow” to act “largely” because of opposition from New Zealand, DSCC said.

“The global community is rallying around the new High Seas Treaty to protect ocean life in international waters, yet New Zealand seems hell bent on a final smash-and-grab on seamounts  in the South Pacific,” Thomas said.

“It is critically important that all nations defend these fragile deep sea ecosystems and the rich web of life they support with a view to permanently closing them to bottom trawling by 2025 at the latest.”

Bottom trawling involves dragging weighted nets along seamounts looking for fish, which risks killing entire species of marine life, with some ships dredging up more than a tonne of coral in a single trawl, DSCC said.

The activity contributes up to 1,500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year through disturbing sea floor sediment, approximately equivalent to the aviation industry’s emissions, a Nature paper estimated in 2021.

Bottom trawling differs from deep sea mining, the process of extracting minerals like cobalt from the ocean floor at depths of up to 6.5 km, through systems such as hydraulic pumps. This month, Norway controversially voted in favour of opening up deep sea mining in the Arctic region.

More than 800 scientists have called for a pause on deep sea mining globally, arguing its impacts have yet to be adequately understood as thousands of species have yet to be discovered.

Mineral concretions on the sea floor host more biodiversity than expected, urging further caution to deep sea mining, according to PhD research conducted by marine biologist Coral Diaz-Recio Lorenzo, announced last week.

By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com

*** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter ***