The
Antarctic which is subject to a world treaty to protect its
environment yet the seas around it remain vulnerable while the Arctic
polar region is subject to national sovereignty. Global warming is
leaving polar seas exposed to exploitation from industrial fishing.
The Arctic is currently losing an area of ice larger than
Scotland ever year. Russian and Norwegian trawlers are
already benefiting from historically high numbers of cod in Arctic
waters as the fish move north.
Alex
Rogers, a visiting professor of conservation at Oxford University
said: “Some quarters are bound to try to cash in on the increase in
economic value of the polar regions – and perhaps even weaken the
will to take urgent climate action by selling this warming as
beneficial.”
Earlier
this year research found the Ross Ice Shelf – which is the biggest
in the world – was melting 10 times faster than expected due to
solar heating in the Antarctic ocean. In Antarctic waters,
trawlers will also be able to catch fish for a larger proportion
of the year. In the Antarctic, major fishers of krill are China,
South Korea, Ukraine and Norway. Norway has developed new technology
that means krill can be sucked straight out of the trawls into the
ships so they can be left in water and don’t spoil so quickly. It
is also looking to catch fish living in the twilight zone between
200m and 1,000m deep. The
UK, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, Chile and
Uruguay are also fishing in Antarctic waters, according to Professor
Rogers. They are mainly fishing an extremely valuable species known
as toothfish, or Chilean sea bass.There are severe ecological costs.
A number
of studies have shown species dependent on krill such as Adélie and
macaroni penguins are in decline. Minke whales and pack-ice seal will
lose the sea ice they depend on for foraging and
reproduction. Professor Rogers said: “Researchers have found a
combination of climate change and fishing for krill could lead to
extinctions of penguins on some of those Subantarctic islands. “If
the fishing pressure was removed then those populations would still
decline but they wouldn’t disappear. These types of interactions
are the ones that are very difficult to understand.”
Earlier
this year the EU and the Arctic Five signed an agreement banning
fishing in specific areas of the Arctic until scientists worked out
if it could be done sustainably.
Professor
Rogers said: “British and French sub-Antarctic territories
such as the South Sandwich Islands and St Paul and Amsterdam are
still not comprehensively protected. Let’s
not make things worse by treating the polar oceans as a burgeoning
economic resource. Instead, let’s give the life they contain the
respect it deserves,” he said.
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