By Claire Konkes
HOBART — Last November, members of the Antarctica and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), the international environmental lobby group trying to keep fishing "honest" in the southern seas, left Hobart's Wrest Point Casino on a yacht to dine on a "sumptuous feast" of Patagonian toothfish.
The Patagonian toothfish is one of many species whose survival is threatened by over-fishing in the Southern Ocean. It is the fish that the ASOC is campaigning to have listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
The dinner, which some ASOC members boycotted, was organised by Isofish, the new "environmental" organisation sponsored by the fishing industry and funded by the federal government. With environmentalists gobbling down their campaign on crackers, washed down with industry-provided bubbly, one can't help but think the fish are paying for all this.
In 1956, 40 countries had the courage to sign the Antarctic Treaty, which prevents the great ice continent from being used for mining or nuclear proliferation. The same courage to protect Antarctic waters appeared to be missing as the Convention for the Conservation of Living Marine Resources (CCLMR) held its 17th convention in the casino's Derwent Room for two weeks in November.
The CCLMR was established in 1980 to manage the Southern Ocean fisheries in a sustainable way. With concern about over-fishing of the high seas growing, exacerbated by the difficulty of policing the vast waters, both Greenpeace and the federal government admit that the CCLMR has not been effective in protecting the Southern Ocean.
At a "Sovereignty at Sea" conference, held in Hobart in October, lawyers, Austral Fisheries, scientists and the Australian navy discussed the meaning of "sovereignty at sea" and how such territory would be policed.
Much lauded at the conference was the 1609 proclamation of Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius that the ocean was so wild and its resources so limitless that ownership was absurd. Since that proclamation, six "freedoms" have been established as international law: freedom of navigation, freedom of overflight, freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines, freedom to construct artificial islands and other installations, freedom of fishing and freedom of scientific research.
The notion of oceans as a limitless resource may have been appropriate in the 1600s, but at the end of the 20th century, with most oceans almost exhausted, the customary freedom to fish the high seas is grossly unreasonable.
At a time when 70% of the commercial fish stocks of the world are threatened with "commercial extinction" (a platitude which is popping up with increasing frequency), the constant increase in the presence of large, heavily capitalised international fishing fleets in the Southern Ocean reflects that the lessons are not being learned.
Ocean Defence, a Hobart-based public trust, is one of the few organisations raising the question of whether fishing in Antarctic waters should be allowed at all. Ocean Defence has launched a campaign for a moratorium on Patagonian toothfish fishing.
In a submission to CCLMR for the moratorium, Ocean Defence states, "Shared accountability for sustaining ocean vitality will become the basis for a mutual and not competitive effort", and calls for "a community of nations effort to stop all fishing in CCLMR waters".
It also states: "Until recent years, the Antarctic waters seemed impossible to explore, much too limitless to fully exploit. Massive capital investment has brought us the ability to do both and with it the ability to police and defend. This responsibility necessarily overrides traditional concepts of sovereignty and control."
There is a lot at stake here because CCLMR has the authority to allocate fish licences, and most of the CCLMR member nations consider the area covered by CCLMR to be their territorial waters. The nations that do not recognise CCLMR continue to regard the Southern Ocean as "high seas" and assert their right to fish in them.
But are there really "good guys" and "bad guys" in the global fishing industry?
Addressing the Sovereignty at Sea conference, Martin Exel presented the industry's point of view on how the "good guys" can keep the "bad guys" out through surveillance. Yet Exel was recently seen speaking with National Parks on behalf of Austral Fisheries (which owns the only two boats operating in Australian Southern Ocean waters around Heard Island) about access to Macquarie Island waters, an as yet "untapped" resource.
As well, it has been reported that some refrigerated tankers involved in regulated fishing in the Southern Ocean are accepting, while at sea, the catch of illegal fishers.
Austral Fisheries has a worldwide corporate family tree that is less than squeaky clean. It is a joint venture of Kailis & France Group and Pescanova. Pescanova, a giant Spanish fishing company, has had a number of longline fishing boats involved in unregulated fishing within the CCLMR area.
Before it sank last year, the Orense, an enormous refrigerated tanker known to be collaborating with longliners involved in the illegal trade, was owned and operated by Argenova, a subsidiary of Pescanova based in Buenos Aires.
Isofish is supposed to be investigating the "pirate trade" in Patagonian toothfish and its coordinator, Alistair Graham, is observing CCLMR meetings.
But Isofish is funded by Austral Fisheries, and the Isofish board includes not only Margaret Moore from Worldwide Fund for Nature, Michael Kennedy from the Humane Society International and Beth Clarke of the Antarctica Project, but also Exel, Stuart Richey, the deputy chairperson of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, Keith Sainsbury from the CSIRO's marine division and Bruce Montgomery, the Hobart correspondent from the Australian newspaper. (Interestingly, the Fairfax correspondent, Andrew Darby, turned up to the CCLMR pre-conference dinner wearing a CCLMR tie.)
The Sovereignty at Sea conference referred most of the hard questions about equity and ecology to the 250 non-government organisations which make up ASOC and are charged with the ominous role of ensuring the transparency of the CCLMR.
Whilst ASOC has for many years observed CCLMR's plenary meetings, it has consistently been refused admission to all other meetings. ASOC's global coordinator is Beth Clarke, who also sits on the Isofish board.
The Patagonian toothfish epitomises the problems of the Southern Ocean fisheries, but it is not the only species being fished to commercial extinction, with all the consequences for the whole Southern Ocean ecology.