Deep-Sea Bottom Fisheries and the Protection of Seabed Ecosystems: Problems, Progress and Prospects

Abstract

While little appreciated in the popular perception of risks to the benthic environment, bottom fisheries have quietly emerged as the most pressing current threat to seabed ecosystems. Bottom fisheries have proved to be an ecologically expensive food source, inflicting damage with a multi-decadal recovery timescale, while also decimating stocks of deep-sea fish not suited to the scale and impact of commercial fishing. Despite these concerns, until the turn of the present century, little regulation has existed in relation to bottom fisheries, as regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) either lacked an express mandate to address benthic ecosystems or had yet to be established in respect of significant portions of the global oceans. In parallel, little provision had been made for seabed fishing within the overarching legal framework provided by the UNCLOS. The contemporary oversight of deep-sea bottom fisheries accordingly represents an intriguing case-study of the development of regulatory standards concerning the seabed. Regulatory momentum has been primarily channelled through the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which has adopted a series of highly influential Resolutions calling for the protection of vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) on the seabed. The political impetus provided by those UNGA Resolutions has prompted the adoption of complementary conservation and management measures by RFMOs, flag states and other pertinent actors. As this Chapter demonstrates, considerable progress has since been made towards the development of uniform standards for bottom fishing, although the implementation of this framework remains far from complete. Such shortcomings will accordingly need to be further addressed in order to operationalise the commitments established under this collective of UNGA Resolutions, and thus to fully protect benthic ecosystems from the adverse impacts of fishing activities.