Iceland, Russia block U.N. ban on bottom trawling

WASHINGTON – Fishing nations led by Iceland and Russia have blocked U.N. negotiators from imposing a full-fledged ban against destructive bottom trawling on the high seas.

After weeks of talks in New York, a United Nations committee that oversees high seas fisheries failed to gain unanimous support this week for ending unregulated bottom trawling.

Fishing boats that drag giant nets along the sea floor can be as destructive as they are effective, wiping out creatures and habitats while scooping up everything in their path, according to a National Academy of Sciences report in 2002.

Iceland and Russia, along with China and South Korea, resisted a proposed ban that had the backing of President Bush and U.S. allies such as Britain, Norway, Australia and New Zealand.

“There were several countries that really didn’t want any controls at all,” Assistant Secretary of State Claudia McMurray said Friday. “Unfortunately, the resolution comes up short. We’re very disappointed that this is the result we ended up with.”

More than 60 conservation groups that campaigned for more than two years for a ban on unregulated high seas bottom trawling are discouraged, but not giving up.

Joshua Reichert, director of the private Pew Charitable Trusts’ environment division, which coordinated the groups’ campaign, called the rejection of the ban “a stunning example of dysfunctional decision-making and the unwillingness of the world’s nations to stand up and just say ‘no’ to activity that is destroying the global marine environment.”

Bottom trawling catches orange roughy, blue ling and other fish. But it smashes coral and stirs clouds of sediment that smother sea life, the U.N. report said, inflicting the worst damage on underwater seamounts that are home to thousands of species of coral and fish.

Earlier this month, a new major study predicted a “global collapse” of the populations of just about all seafood by 2048, if fishing around the world continues at its present pace.