Now comes forth the hardasses of the ecoterrorist movement. Harpoons and sail boats with two fishing lines allowed would make them happy. No nets or trawls would be their first option. But most of all, if there were no commercial fishing, they would be ecstatic. Beware of cults.

- Bob Jones

International Headquarters
P.O. Box 2616
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
Tel: (360) 370-5500
Fax: (360) 370-55019

March 2000

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's Comments on Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting to address management of fisheries for salmon, coastal pelagic species, Pacific halibut, highly migratory species, and groundfish: - highly migratory species management.

My name is Frank Trinkle. I am the director of development for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. As the representative of an international marine wildlife conservation organization, I am here to represent what the Independent World Commission on the Oceans is fond of calling "non-utilitarian trans-national values:" That is to say, I'm speaking on behalf of civil society, future generations, and the global environment as they will be affected by your decision on this regional fishery. To that end, I would like to remind the Council, in all its deliberations, of three necessities of fisheries management: The precautionary principle, the ecosystem management approach, and enforcement.

The precautionary principle, as originally embodied in the Rio Declaration, requires that a lack of scientific data providing absolute proof of a conservation problem and its cause shall not be used to justify avoidance or delay in the implementation of effective conservation measures to guard against the loss of biological diversity. Sea Shepherd wonders how seriously the Council is taking the precautionary principle in light of many of the provisions, or lack thereof, in the 2000 fisheries management plans.

We object in the strongest possible terms to the opening of any new experimental fisheries off the coast of California, such as the salmon fishery south of Pillar Point. Such openings are being pressed upon the public just two years after the National Marine Fisheries Service required all commercial fishing operations off the Pacific Coast to reduce their catch by up to 65%. And that measure, we remind the Council, was a political compromise, over the urging of NMFS biologists to impose cuts of 80% or greater if we were serious about attempting a recovery of the West Coat's [sic] failing fisheries.

The ecosystem management approach requires you to consider the other species affected by the fishery on the species for which you are setting quotas. It also requires the conservation of fisheries impacts on the species you are managing when that species is also fished beyond the  boundaries of your jurisdiction. In Mexico, by conservative estimate, 40 new longline permits have been issued or are under consideration. Hence, both the legal and illegal take of shark, marlin, swordfish and billfish is on the rise, and this Council cannot afford to ignore that fact in its deliberations on the management of these highly migratory species.

The ocean's top predator is in free-fall. We know that pelagic shark populations are in severe decline; how severe is simply unknown. We know that populations of large coastal sharks have declined by as much as 80% since 1970. And even with recent US quota cuts and prohibitions on the landings of 21 species, the pressure from commercial fishing interests remains many times what these populations can sustain, and there is no evidence of recovery among large coastal sharks. All of them might as well have bull's-eyes pained [sic] on this fins. At least a third of all sharks caught are trapped in fishing gear cast for other species, but with shark fins now going for up to $250 per pound in Asian markets, the boats are very happy to see the sharks winched on board along with their targeted catch. The ongoing failure of the Council to institute the same protections for the Pacific shark fisheries as are in place in the Atlantic fishery is an international scandal. With an estimated 100 million sharks taken for their fins since the explosion of the practice, sharks need to be given consistent, real protection, and the practice of shark finning needs to be banned outright.

If enforcement efforts continue to be as lackluster as they have been in recent years, the Council will soon be unable to rely on the accuracy of any obtainable fishery data in setting quotas, as your data will not include the increasing, unknown illegal catch and by-catch of commercial vessels fishing with impunity inside the EEZ. Most of the people in this room are aware that the vessel monitoring system for pelagic longliners is a farce and a failure. It must be made mandatory, and it must include all vessels in the commercial fleet.

The California drift gillnet fishery for thresher shark and swordfish has been exceeding its allowable lethal take of endangered loggerhead turtles and sperm whales since 1998. The species caught and killed in this fishery are being taken in violation of the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. We should follow the example set by Washington State last December and immediately discontinue gillnet fishing for thresher shark.

Federal fishery managers have a clear duty. They have not done it. For 20 years, they have failed to halt the slaughter of sharks, sailfish, swordfish, turtles, dolphins and marine mammals killed by longlines and drift gillnets off this coast, on the pretense that the world's most indiscriminate form of fishing can be controlled by quotas. But the victims of that tragic mistake, the species that may be in the most immediate danger of extinction from the management policies that have allowed this devastation, are human. The harpoon fishermen who have been fishing for swordfish for generations are in danger of being completely wiped out by the commercial boats, which indiscriminately take juvenile swordfish, decimating the breeding stock of the next generation. The harpooners whose families have been fishing these waters for forty or fifty years or more, who take only the mature fish, whose by-catch rate is zero, who take only what they need to maintain their livelihood and sustain their families, will not survive another ten years of gillnets, longlines, and inept fishery management. They are being choked to death by the most destructive form of fishing ever devised.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society wants indiscriminate gillnets and longlines phased out in all US waters, and that is a law that must be rigorously enforced if decimated shark and billfish populations are to have any hope of recovery.