Kia ora ocean lovers,

Thank you so much for signing our petition last year, calling on the New Zealand Government to ban bottom trawling on seamounts to protect deep-sea corals. Thanks to your voice, and the thousands of others who signed the petition, we’ve got some progress to update you about!

You might remember that last year we delivered the petition, and a life-sized replica of a 500-year-old bubblegum coral printed with your name among the 52,443 names of people that signed the petition. The petition itself was referred to the Environment Select Committee.

A couple of months ago, they asked us for evidence to support our petition, so we put together a report on the importance of seamounts, and the destruction being wrought by bottom trawl fishing on seamounts. A few amazing and shocking facts in our report include:

• New Zealand is now the only country that is still trawling on seamounts in the South Pacific high seas. Not only that, but our ships are also trawling seamounts in Aotearoa waters and around Tasmania. A New Zealand-owned vessel is even trawling in the Indian Ocean!
• All of the six bottom trawl vessels that the Ministry of Primary Industries has authorised to trawl in the South Pacific high seas belong to companies that have been convicted in the past year of illegal trawling in protected areas! There is simply no excuse for letting these companies keep destroying our fragile deep-sea corals.
• We still have so much to learn about the biodiversity found on seamounts and in the deep sea. In just the past 3 years in Aotearoa, scientists have discovered 128 species, 6 genera, and 1 family that are new to science. Sadly, these creatures have been discovered, dead or dying, in fisheries bycatch.

Now is the time to end this destruction once and for all. We have been asked to present this evidence on Thursday 5 August to the Environment Select Committee. Our presentation will be at 09.20 New Zealand time and will be streamed live on the Environment Committee’s Facebook page if you want to tune in or listen later.

Ngā mihi,

Karli Thomas

Deep Sea Conservation Coalition