Saving Seafood

Senators Feinstein, Harris introduce bill to ban drift nets in California

April 30, 2018 — A bipartisan bill to ban controversial drift net fishing off California’s coast was introduced Thursday by Democratic California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, along with West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito.

The nets, which can be more than a mile long, are intended to catch swordfish but end up trapping dolphins, sea lions and a host of other marine life, many of which die.

“The use of drift nets to target swordfish harms too many endangered or protected marine animals and should be phased out,” Feinstein said in an emailed statement. “It’s unacceptable that a single California fishery that uses this type of drift net is killing more dolphins and porpoises than the rest of the West Coast combined.”

Large mesh drift nets are already banned in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, as well as off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii, according to Feinstein. Additionally, the United States is a signatory to international agreements that ban large drift nets in international waters.

Read the full story at the Orange County Register

 

The European Commission sees the light

November 16, 2015 — On Tuesday November 10, the Director General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Mr.  João Aguiar Machado announced that the European Commission had dropped its proposal to ban all kinds of drift nets throughout EU waters. Addressing the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament, DG Aguiar Machado stated that the regulation of drift nets would rather be addressed through regionalisation and the framework proposal on technical measures due to be published in early 2016.

Small scale fishers across Europe had been dismayed by the former Commissioner Damanaki’s announcement in May 2014 that she was determined to “eradicate once and for all” fishing with drift nets in European waters, with a ban to be implemented on January 1 2015.

Damanaki’s decision was backed by an impact assessment that had reached the conclusion, that due to signs that the number of vessels partaking in driftnet fishing had seen a decrease, ‘the overall socio-economic impact of the total ban is therefore considered irrelevant’. The impact assessment by its own admission, was inherently flawed, noting it had “not been possible to collect accurate landings data from driftnet fisheries apart from Italy and UK, which made it almost impossible to identify the economic importance of the gear at the European level.”

Read the full story at Low Impact Fishers of Europe