Source: Business Daily
May 07, 2009: Merchant ships have been blamed for contributing to littering of the world’s oceans.
According to a new report jointly produced by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UN Environment Programme (Unep), the ships deposit 5.6 million tonnes of litter annually. This accounts to 88 per cent of the total marine litter.
It states that presently, there is an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter floating per square kilometre of ocean waters. About 8 million pieces of marine litter enter the waters daily, mostly solid waste thrown overboard or lost from ships.
Most of the litter from the ships, it states, are lost and abandoned fishing gears. Others are assorted debris, including ropes and cargo-associated wastes such as pallets, wires, plastic covers, drums and shipping containers, along with accumulated oils.
According to the report, there are 640,000 tonnes of abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear in oceans, accounting for 10 per cent of all marine litter.
Apart from trapping fish, a phenomenon referred to by the report as ‘ghost fishing’, the abandoned and lost gears also pose a hazard to ships.
The projected increase in scale of global fishing operations and introduction of fishing gear made of long-lasting synthetic materials is expected to exacerbate the problem.
While blaming merchant ships for 88 per cent of lost gears in the open sea, it singles out land-based sources as the main cause of marine debris in coastal areas.
“Most fishing gear is not deliberately discarded but is lost in storms or strong currents or from ‘gear conflicts’. For example, fishing with nets in areas where bottom-traps that can entangle them are already deployed,” the report states.
Apart from fish, the gear also continuously trap other animals such as turtles, seabirds, and marine mammals, resulting in their death. They also result in alteration of the sea-floor environment; besides creating navigation hazards that can cause accidents at sea and damage boats.
The report says that while gill nets, fishing pots and traps are most likely to ‘ghost fish’, long lines ensnare other marine organisms, whereas trawls damage sub-sea habitats.
Bottom-set gill nets, with bottoms anchored to the sea floor and floats attached to the top, form a vertical wall of up to 10,000 metres. Even after being lost or abandoned, these nets continue fishing for years.
Financial incentives
The report recommends financial incentives to encourage fishers to report lost gear or bring to port old and damaged gear, as well as any ghost nets recovered while fishing.
Other proposed measures include marking gear and development of new technologies such as seabed imaging, geographic Positioning Systems (GPS), transponders as well as weather monitoring technology.
Mr Achim SteinerWhile sea bed imaging would be used to avoid undersea snags and obstacles; vessels can use GPS to mark locations where gear has been lost, facilitating retrieval, a task that can also be carried out using and transponders can be fitted to gear in order to do the same. An improvement in weather monitoring technology would help skippers avoid deploying nets when very bad weather is imminent.
The study recommends expediting the commercial adoption of durable gear components that incorporate bio-degradable and magnetic elements, alongside a reporting and retrieval system.
It states that there is need to facilitate proper disposal of all old, damaged and retrieved fishing gears by establishing facilities at the ports such as disposal bins on docks and providing boats with oversized, high-strength disposal bags for old fishing gear can help remedy this.
It adds that vessels should be required to log gear losses to improve awareness of potential hazards and increase the opportunity for gear recovery.
“However a ‘no-blame’ approach should be followed with respect to liability for losses, their impacts, and any recovery efforts,” it says.
Already, FAO is involved in an ongoing review of Annex V of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) as regards fishing gear and shore side reception facilities by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).
The report detailing the heavy littering of oceans comes before a World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia next week, where the issue of realising healthy marine environments will feature high on the agenda.
FAO assistant director general for fisheries and aquaculture, Ichiro Nomura, has called for action by industry and governments to take action to significantly reduce the amount of lost or abandoned fishing gear in the marine environment.
He predicts that the amount of fishing gear remaining in the marine environment will continue to accumulate and the impacts on marine ecosystems will continue to get worse unless action is taken to deal with marine debris.
Multiple fronts
He adds that such strategies for addressing the problem must occur on multiple fronts, including prevention, mitigation, and curative measures.
Unep executive director, Mr Achim Steiner, says that abandoned and lost fishing gear is part of challenges affecting the marine environment.
Others are over-fishing and acidification linked with greenhouse gases to the rise in de-oxygenated ‘dead zones’ as a result of run off and land-based source of pollution.
Mr Steiner adds that the challenges must be urgently addressed collectively if the productivity of oceans and seas is to be maintained for present and future generations, not least for achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals.
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