EarthRef.org Digital Archive (ERDA) -- Deepsea Seamounts in the Southwest Pacific: Fisheries and Conservation

Description
The world¿s major marine fisheries have generally taken place on the relatively narrow and shallow continental shelf. But over the last 2-3 decades deepwater trawl fisheries have developed on the upper continental slope and offshore seamounts, and are an important component of commercial fisheries in the Southwest Pacific. These fisheries include well-known species like orange roughy, oreos, cardinalfish and alfonsino. New Zealand and Australian catches of these species total several thousand tonnes per year, with orange roughy being the largest fishery at about 20,000 tons. In this keynote lecture for the First SBN Workshop Malcolm Clark details the current status on seamount fisheries, the amount of overfishing, fisheries management and attempts to habitat conservation -- all with an emphasis on the EEC of New Zealand.

Keywords
orange roughy, South Chatham Rise, Puysegur, East Cape, Mercury-Colville, Challenger, voluntary seasonal closures, voluntary are closures, adaptive management programs, feature limits, species diversity, benthic invertebrates, deepsea fisheries

Project -- Meetings and Workshops -- SBN Workshops
The goal of the Seamount Biogeosciences Network (SBN) is to bring together all the diverse science disciplines involved in seamount research, to communicate about and discuss seamount science, and to explore innovative ways to network amongst the diverse communities working on seamounts.