The phrase destructive fishing practices (or DFPs) has been featured in international fisheries literature for around three decades. No widely accepted definition of the phrase exists, and this will almost certainly remain the situation, given very different national and industry perspectives. The DFPs discussion with the most standing is that of the Fisheries and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - the FAO.

The Outcomes and Implementation Statements of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in 2002, contain a commitment to phasing out destructive fishing practices in the marine environment by the year 2012. All nations attending the summit supported this statement.

Many nations had made commitments to end destructive fishing practices much earlier. In 1999, 124 nations explicitly gave their support to the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries 1995 through the Rome Declaration on Responsible Fisheries. The list of these nations includes most of the major fishing nations of the world. However, while the Code of Conduct contains a commitment to end destructive fishing practices, the Code contains no time-lines.

The narrowest definition of destructive fishing practices refers principally to bottom trawling over vulnerable habitat (shallow coral

Coral

Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...

s, deep sea corals , or seagrass

Seagrass

Seagrasses are flowering plants from one of four plant families , all in the order Alismatales , which grow in marine, fully saline environments.-Ecology:...

, for example), as well as practices such as shark-finning, blast-fishing, poison-fishing, muroami

Muroami

The muro-ami fishing technique, employed on coral reefs in Southeast Asia, uses an encircling net together with pounding devices. These devices usually comprise large stones fitted on ropes that are pounded onto the coral reefs. They can also consist of large heavy blocks of cement that are...

 , and push-netting. These latter practices are not significant within the fishing zones of most developed nations, being generally outlawed. Bottom trawling over vulnerable habitat, however, will continue within the Exclusive Fishing Zones of most nations until governments have mapped the location of vulnerable habitats, and taken steps to exclude all bottom trawling activities from these areas.

A wider and more useful definition would include:

• overfishing beyond reasonable recovery limits , including serial overfishing;
• excessive or damaging levels of bycatch ;
• the fishing of spawning aggregations without precautionary justification ;
• intensive fishing over vulnerable habitats, including for example spawning and nursery areas; and
• highgrading–the practice of discarding the lower quality portion of the target catch.

This definition could be extended to cover activities such as:

• ghost fishing by lost or discarded gear ,
• shark netting of popular swimming beaches (with high incidental catch) ,
• amateur use of fish aggregating devices or traps where they increase the likelihood of locally unsustainable catch levels,
• spearfishing at night or with SCUBA, as well as 'industrial' spearfishing,
• use of stainless steel hooks or traps;
• commercial and recreational use of gill nets and traps with high incidental kill, and
• deliberate (and sometimes illegal) destruction of marine life perceived as “getting in the way” of fishing operations .

External links

• Nevill, Jon (2007) Destructive fishing practices: definitions
• Destructive fishing practices: definitions - Conservation Science Institute
• Fishing problems: Destructive fishing practices - WWF
  World Wide Fund for Nature
  The World Wide Fund for Nature is an international non-governmental organization working on issues regarding the conservation, research and restoration of the environment, formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States...
  
  
• McClellan, Kate (Lead Author) (2008) Coral degradation through destructive fishing practices Encyclopedia of Earth
  Encyclopedia of Earth
  The Encyclopedia of Earth is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The Encyclopedia is described as a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and other approved experts, who...
  
  . Last revised August 24, 2008; Retrieved 17 January 2009.
• Destructive fishing practices - European Commission
  European Commission
  The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
  
  
• Questions and Answers on Destructive Fishing Practices - European Commission
  European Commission
  The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
  
  
• Destructive fishing practices - The Fisheries Secretariat
• Destructive fishing practices - EUbusiness.com, 17 October 2007.
• UN review shows need to halt destructive fishing practice - EurekAlert 2006.
• Destructive fishing practices - Spearfishing World