Australian Government must support closures on the high seas
06 Jul 2006
Australian and New Zealand fishing companies are among members of the Southern Indian Ocean Deepwater Fishers Association (SIODFA) that today announced voluntary protection of 11 sites across the Indian Ocean, effectively protecting an area of 309,000 km2, more than the size of the State of Victoria.
WWF welcomes this announcement and calls on the Australian Government to support this voluntary action by strengthening international maritime law to provide proper legal support for the protection of high seas habitats and populations.
"Governments need to do more to protect the marine environment. We need to build a safety net for marine biodiversity across all the major oceans, not only within the coastal zones but also across the open waters and over the deep ocean basins," said WWF's Ocean's Program Leader Gilly Llewellyn.
"We urgently need protection for a fully representative set of high seas habitats and the fish that live there, including habitats such as sea mounts with their vulnerable corals and long-lived fish species such as orange roughy.
"We also need urgent protection for sites where marine species aggregate to breed, as well as corridors where marine species such as turtles migrate," she says.
Today's announcement reinforces the findings of WWF's 2006 report Follow the leader: Learning from experience and best practice in regional fisheries management organizations, which found that regional fisheries management organisations are failing to deliver effective conservation and management, particularly in the Indian Ocean and on the high seas.
"We urgently need effective management regimes for all fishing areas and all fish stocks. Without such frameworks, there can be no guarantee of a sustainable future for marine ecosystems and fish populations, and for those whose livelihoods and incomes depend on them," says Ms Llewellyn.
Find out more
Charlie Stevens, Press Officer, WWF-Australia
Phone: 02 8202 1274
Mobile: 0424 649 689
Email: cstevens@wwf.org.au
