Dozens of governments ended a weeklong review of high seas fisheries agreeing on Friday to pursue stronger measures for conserving sharks, tackling overfishing and deterring the effects of climate change.
However, the gathering of diplomats, environmentalists and scientists produced little that could toughen enforcement of the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement among more than 70 nations and the EU. The agreement took effect in 2001.
“There’s never as many teeth as we would like — some real consequences of non-compliance,” said Susan Lieberman, international policy director for the Pew Environment Group in Washington. “But there were some decent recommendations.”
The UN’s legal framework is used to regulate tuna, swordfish and other migratory species that travel long distances. It also covers halibut, cod and other species that straddle the exclusive economic zones of coastal nations.
Diplomats who attended recommended that nations and regional economic organizations urgently help push for conservation of overfished and depleted fish stocks.
They also agreed their recommendations adopted at the last such review in 2006 should “continue and be strengthened.” And they agreed to meet again, but no earlier than 2015.
Some of the other recommendations called for:
• Considering climate change in finding new ways of fisheries management.
• Collecting data on different species of sharks, including how many are being caught and discarded by fishing boats that unintentionally catch them in their nets.
• Strengthening “enforcement of existing prohibitions on shark finning.” That fell far short of what the tiny Pacific nation of Palau had called for: an international moratorium on sharks caught for their fins.
Palauan Ambassador Stuart Beck had said his nation hoped to prevent the killing of 73 million sharks a year for shark fin soup, popular in China and other nations as a symbol of wealth. Last year, the nation announced the creation of the world’s first shark sanctuary to protect more than 130 other species fighting extinction in the Pacific Ocean.
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