Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-12-16-Speech-4-037"
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"en.20041216.6.4-037"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this proposal, which has been adopted by this Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries, seeks to prevent the use of a fishing technique that is highly damaging to the extremely fragile marine systems of deep-water corals, which not only contribute their own richness to biodiversity but are also important ecological habitats for various organisms at various stages in their life cycles.
According to the Commission, protection is given to the areas around Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries, outermost archipelagos where the traditional fishing methods that have been used for centuries up to the present day have made it possible not only to preserve species but also to maintain thriving fishing communities.
At a time when we are witnessing growing concern about the maintenance of fish stocks and when various recovery plans are being set up in areas devastated by overfishing, the sustainable fishing practised in those archipelagos deserves that we should all encourage it and adopt a position to support and safeguard it. Besides, we are talking about areas where there is no continental shelf and therefore the places where fishing is possible are confined to small seamounts generally associated with those deep-water corals.
It can be said that there is a lot of water around those archipelagos but there are not many fish or fishing areas. It is therefore essential to safeguard and protect those areas from the destructive – highly destructive – activities of industrial fisheries. The emergency measures put in place are already a help but we have to have lasting solutions, and for that reason this Commission proposal is laudable.
Nonetheless, the proposed amendments to widen the ban on nets to include bottom gill nets make complete sense to me. Because of the anchors used and the risk of loss, they can cause ghost fishing and also seabed erosion, threatening the ecological balance of the deep-water corals.
I therefore believe that the proposal for a ban should be widened to include gill nets and also to include the 200-mile zones, because this proposal is based on maintaining what existed until very recently. With my knowledge of the situation, I can guarantee that by adopting these proposals we will be helping to protect the environment and the sustainable kind of fishing that we think should be based more on prevention than on
cure."@en1
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