Japan and Taiwan to quit drift netting

Forest and Bird, Volume 23, Issue 1, 1 February 1992, Page 2

Japan and Taiwan to quit drift netting

Alan Tennyson

THE NOVEMBER announcements by Japan and Taiwan that they will cease all drift netting by the end of 1992 are a long awaited breakthrough for marine conservation. They are particularly important to New Zealand’s seabirds. The announcements came after years of intense lobbying from the international community and recent threats of economic sanctions against drift netting nations. With its Asian fishing neighbours giving in to pressure, South Korea is also likely to stop drift netting. Although all drift netting in the south Pacific and Tasman Sea was banned from July 1991 this further ban will be of immense benefit to New Zealand wildlife. Each year the Japanese squid fleet alone drowns hundreds of thousands of New Zealandbreeding seabirds, including up to 3,800 of our endemic Buller’s shearwater, up to 14,000 flesh-footed shearwaters, and hundreds of thousands of sooty shearwaters (southern muttonbirds), when the birds are on their annual migration to the north Pacific. Other

drift net fleets worldwide are virtually unmonitored so their impacts cannot be quantified. Despite the huge outcry about the use of the monofilament, 50-km long nets in the Pacific Ocean, the Asian fleets had expanded into the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Recently European countries, including France, Italy, Denmark, Ireland and Great Britain have also developed drift netting fleets, which now roam north Atlantic, Baltic and Mediterranean waters. The announcements by Japan and Taiwan could be the nail in the coffin for this unsavoury fishing method as Japan has the largest driftnetting fleet in the world with about 600 vessels. However, New Zealanders should not forget that only the largest of the world’s gill nets are affected by the bans. Inshore gill netting continues in many countries, including New Zealand which allows widespread set netting and drift nets under 1 km in length to be used. Gill nets are indiscriminate no matter what their length.