Amsterdam, Netherlands – In a new video published today, Greenpeace International reveals dramatic damage of bottom trawling on the Emperor Seamounts in the North Pacific, devastating fragile ecosystems, and calls for the creation of a new marine protected area in the High Seas, which would include a ban on all fishing practices. 

The footage, collected by researchers at the Florida State University over several years [1], shows bottom trawl scars on the seabed thousands of metres beneath the waves. The compelling evidence emphasises how this precious ecosystem has been decimated by years of bottom trawling, which involves dragging heavy weighted fishing gear across the sea floor, destroying fragile communities that take thousands of years to grow. 

Visuals are available in the Greenpeace Media Library here.

“The deep oceans are an amazing, mysterious world, full of life. This footage of ghost gear littering the seafloor hundreds of metres deep shows the degree of impact that the fishing industry has had and the urgent need for protection of these High Seas seamounts so that they can recover to the rich communities we see in unimpacted areas”, explained Dr. Amy Baco-Taylor, Professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Florida State University.

The Emperor Seamounts, a remote chain of more than 800 seamounts, is an ecological and cultural hotspot [2] and a vulnerable marine ecosystem (VME) home to a rich variety of cold-water corals and sponges, as well as smaller creatures like crustaceans, sea stars and several species of marine mammals. Trawlers target the area because of its abundance of marine life..

Bottom trawling is a favoured method by commercial fishing companies for the potential to catch large quantities of animals in one go. But is an indiscriminate way of fishing, tearing up seabed ecosystems, often hauling in significant bycatch, threatening the biodiversity of the ocean and endangering the health of the fishery itself. 

“Even in the most remote areas of the oceans, in the great silence of the deep, industrial fishing is causing environmental destruction”, adds Chris Thorne, Protect the Oceans Campaign Manager, Greenpeace UK. “The Emperor Seamounts must be one of the first areas protected using the Global Ocean Treaty, and the first of many new protected areas which must cover 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.”

The UN General Assembly made a Resolution in 2006 calling for protection for vulnerable marine ecosystems, including seamounts, from bottom fishing. But states and regional fisheries organisations keep postponing action year after year. The ratification of the Global Ocean Treaty is more than ever urgent to protect vulnerable ecosystems without any further delay. 

Only 20 vessels from six countries are estimated to bottom trawl on high seas seamounts. However the destruction is large and long lasting, while seamount  catches only make up a tiny proportion of total global marine catch [3]. In April, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission (NPFC), the body responsible for managing fishing in the area, failed to pass a proposal from the US and Canada to ban bottom trawling on the Emperor Seamounts, despite just two vessels known to currently bottom fish the site. [4]

ENDS

Contacts: 

Magali Rubino, Global Media Lead, Greenpeace Protect the Oceans campaign, Greenpeace France: [email protected] +33 7 78 41 78 78 (GMT+1)

Greenpeace International Press Desk: [email protected], +31 (0) 20 718 2470 (available 24 hours)

Notes:

[1] The footage was captured by ROV and AUV submersibles on two of Dr. Amy Baco-Taylor’s (National Science Foundation funded) projects in 2016/17 and 2022. 

Dr. Baco-Taylor is a leading expert on the Emperor Seamounts.

[2] The Emperor Seamounts have a very rich cultural history which spans thousands of years.
See “A Forgotten Maritime Highway: Maritime Cultural Heritage of the Emperor Seamounts with Implications for High Seas Conservation” (2024) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-024-09389-4 

Papahānaumokuākea and the wider ocean area beyond hold a deep cosmological and traditional significance for living Native Hawaiian culture, as an ancestral environment and embodiment of the Hawaiian concept of kinship between people and the natural world.

[3] Most of the target catch by these vessels across high seas regions consists of four species: pelagic armourhead in the North Pacific; splendid alfonsino in the North Pacific, Southern Indian Ocean and the North Atlantic; orange roughy in the Southwest Pacific, Southern Indian Ocean and the Northeast Atlantic; and roundnose grenadier in the Northeast Atlantic.
“Protecting Global Seamounts”, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition https://deep-sea-conservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Protecting-Global-Ocean-Seamounts-7.pdf

[4] The members of NPFC did not adopt the proposal from the US and Canada, primarily because of opposition from Japan, meaning the Commission has failed to deliver on its commitments and obligations under international law to manage high seas fisheries to ensure that they “protect biodiversity in the marine environment”.

Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, has completed a five-week expedition in the North Pacific Ocean to document destructive fishing practices and labour conditions of Taiwanese longlining vessels encountered around the Emperor Seamounts. Greenpeace investigators documented full length hauls of longliners on the high seas witnesses shark deaths