|
|
|
|
National Tree Day Planet Ark Home
|
|
|
||
|
WWF calls for saving harbour porpoise in Europe |
||
|
Mail this story to a friend | Printer friendly version
|
||
| SWITZERLAND: February 25, 2002 | ||
|
GENEVA - The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) last week warned that the harbour porpoise faced possible extinction in the North and Baltic Seas, where thousands die each year trapped in fishing nets.
|
||
|
At least 7,000 harbour porpoises, among the smallest members of the cetacean family of aquatic mammals which also includes dolphins and whales, perish annually in nets set at the bottom of the North Sea to catch cod, turbot and plaice, a WWF statement said. The Swiss-based conservation group urged European Union (EU) ministers to agree on measures to reduce this "bycatch". "The level of bycatch is very high - most of the harbour porpoises have drowned by the time the nets are pulled in," said Julian Scola, WWF's European fisheries campaign spokesman. "There have been fewer and fewer sightings in recent years, so there is good reason to be concerned," he told Reuters. WWF's recommendations include using "pingers" - boxes attached to fishing nets which emit a sound that discourages porpoises from entering the net. Further research was also needed on acoustically reflective nets, it added. "If some of these measures are not implemented urgently, the harbour porpoise will face extinction," said Heike Vesper, fisheries officer at WWF-Germany. It also called for sighting surveys to be done to determine the surviving population. In 1994, a survey estimated the number of harbour porpoises in the North Sea at between 267,000 and 465,000, while only 599 were believed to be in the Baltic Sea. WWF said that in the last eight years "a serious depletion of population is highly probable".
|
||
|
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
|
||
|
