Legacy - February 2014

Legacy – February 2014 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2014 – Year of Healthy Marine Ecosystems If the rest of the world isn’t required to meet similar requirements, “then we’re going to lose this industry,” he added.

Cooper said his fellow fishers can be fined up to $10,000 for a first offence if their nets miss the allowed range by an angle of five degrees or more. They can lose their boats and be fined up to $50,000 for a second offence.

In an email Tuesday, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it is indeed in the process of revising rules so that they might more stringently apply domestic regulations.

The agency would not speculate on a time frame, but Zak Smith, a lawyer for the council and coauthor of the report, expressed hope that new regulations might be imminent.

“We do know, just from talking to people, that they’re in the works, that they’re circulating within the government, and that we would hope for something in the first half of this year,” Smith said.

Any new regulations should force importers to prove, like U.S. companies are already required to do, that protective measures are being used and that they’re being monitored for compliance with regulations, he added.

The report said the volume of mammal bycatch fell about 30 per cent — to 4,356 in 2006 — after the U.S. adopted domestic guidelines in the 1990s to enforce its Nixon-era Marine Mammal Protection Act. But the provisions related to imports, which comprise more than 90 per cent of the fish consumed in the U.S., have never been respected.

In the case of one mammal, the endangered North American right whale, the report said interactions with fishing gear accounted for at least 1.8 whale deaths per year — a trend which would, it calculated, guarantee the species’ extinction.

Harbour porpoises are dying in far greater overall numbers, with up to 2,900 snared by fishing equipment each year, and also face the risk of extinction.

Canada, meanwhile, is not playing its part, the report said. “(In the U.S.), groundlines are required to sink during certain times and in certain areas to reduce large whale entanglement. Canadian fishers have no such requirements,” it said.

“The (U.S. National Marine) Fisheries Service also requires lobstermen to use weak links designed to break free under the pressure exerted by a whale, a requirement not imposed on Canadian lobstermen.”

The Canadian government, which is reviewing the report, did not immediately comment on its findings.

The Natural Resources Defence Council is one of the more influential environmental NGOs in the U.S., with $182.8 million in net assets according to its latest available tax filing.