Authorities have imposed a two-year suspension on deep sea fishing activity in a patch of the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia, after a commercial fishing vessel was recorded to have scooped up multiple species of coral – including deep water reef-building species – and inflicting serious damage upon one of the area’s most vulnerable marine ecosystems.

In an ‘encounter’ that has drawn yet more ire from local NGOs over the New Zealand government’s ‘hollow commitment to ocean protection’, the New Zealand bottom trawler, the Tasman Viking, has been accused of exceeding the 15kg limit for accidental coral bycatch.

According to official records, the vessel destroyed gorgonian corals (known as sea fans), with a small amount of black and stony corals.

The incident has prompted both strong criticism of a New Zealand government that continues to authorise bottom trawling in vulnerable marine spaces alongside urgent calls to expedite the ratification of a Global Ocean Treaty that will better protect deep sea ecosystems from destructive practices such as trawling and mining.

It all took place within a patch of sea on the Lord Howe Rise, an area said to be rich and abundant and include a chain of seamounts or underwater mountains that provides a habitat to a variety of marine life, from coral to whales and seabirds.

The fact bottom trawling is still permitted within such an area has left campaigners and citizens across both Australia and New Zealand “shocked and embarassed” for a New Zealand government now seemingly falling ‘even further behind on global commitments to ocean protection and restoration.’

New Zealand’s public pledge of $10 million to a global fund for coastal coral protection at the UN’s Conference on Biological Diversity, COP16 last week has since been labeled a “hollow commitment” by NGOs speaking in opposition to the permitted trawling.

“The global community has agreed that the destruction of corals in international waters must stop,” said Karli Thomas of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. 

“This latest incident underlines why New Zealand and other bottom trawling countries need to be held to account for their destruction of vulnerable marine ecosystems that 20 years of CBD and United Nations resolutions have said must be protected.”

This isn’t, however, the first time the vessel the Tasman Viking has found itself on the spot. Last year, it was forced to pay a fine of NZ$52,000 after it failed to report a bycatch of 20kg of rare bamboo corals it had trawled from within the same area of the Tasman Sea. 

International fishing rules dictate that any bycatch above the 15kg limit set by South Pacific Regional Fisheries Organisation must be communicated to all member nations. However, in a recent interview with local media, New Zealand Oceans and Fisheries Minister, Shane Jones called for a “review over such limits” suggesting the country needed to “revisit what’s an acceptable amount to extract accidentally when harvesting.”

For Greenpeace, WWF-New Zealand, The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, and other environmental groups like them, that ‘acceptable amount’ is non-existent. 

Greenpeace Aotearoa’s oceans campaigner, Juan Parada, said: “While the international community convenes around ocean protection under the new Global Ocean Treaty, New Zealand remains an outlier, blocking efforts to restrict bottom trawling in international waters while continuing to trach biodiversity hotspots.

“Bottom trawling seamounts is a destructive fishing method and it’s time New Zealand left it behind for good.”

The irony that this particular event occurred in the build-up to this year’s COP16 hasn’t been lost on NGOs and campaigners, either. During a side event at COP16 last week, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition launched a new Seamounts Accord, calling on governments to “finish the job” and effectively protect seamounts and other vulnerable marine ecosystems from “destructive bottom trawl fishing.”

At its launch, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition’s policy advisor, Matthew Gianni, said: “The deep sea is one of the most biologically diverse areas of our planet. CBD member countries finally, after eight years of negotiations, agreed a way forward to identify new ecologically and biologically significant areas on the high seas. 

“This will be of real value to our work in convincing countries to take further actions to protect seamounts and other deep-sea ecosystems and biodiversity from damage caused by bottom trawling and to agree to a moratorium on deep-sea mining.”

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