The Sea Turtle Restoration Project and the International Game Fish Association Monday joined together at U.N. World Headquarters in New York to voice support before a Law of the Sea panel to endorse a moratorium on fishing in the Pacific with lines up to 60 miles long with as many as 2,000 baited hooks. The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition opposes bottom trawling, notorious for damaging virtually everything nets draw across.

The latest report from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on "Oceans and the Law of the Sea," published in March, points out they "are threatened by climate change, natural disasters, environmental degradation, depletion of fisheries, loss of biodiversity and ineffective control by the "flag states" of fishing vessels.

The report suggested a series of actions be taken to deal with the problems, including "overexploitation of marine resources."

It recommended, "urgent action and adopt innovative measures to eliminate over-fishing and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing" and called on member states of the United Nations "to prevent further destruction of marine ecosystems and associated losses of biodiversity" and engage in conservation discussions.

Calling Leatherback sea turtles, the "canary in the mineshaft" of the high seas, James Spotilla of Drexel University, said they "urgently need the help of the United Nations," and advocates a "network of sustainable use high seas MPAs" as key to saving the turtles.

He said the number of nesting females have dropped "from about 1,300 in 1998-1989 to about 50 this past year."

Spotilla said "longline fishing" was killing them off at about 20 percent a year, meaning the leatherbacks could go extinct in as soon as five years.

"What we are seeing is the extinction of a species," he told reporters at a briefing in connection with the U.N. Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea, as the hearings are billed in U.N.-speak. The aim is establishing marine protected areas where industrial fishing would be prohibited.

"For so many years, ocean protection groups have been working in isolation. The current crisis has united us around the solution of sustainable use high seas MPAs," said Robert Ovetz, coordinator of the Save the Leatherback Campaign with the project.

"The high seas make up the majority of the world's oceans and large parts of the high seas are devoid of effective internationally agreed controls," the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition said in a statement, adding fishing was stripping the bio-diversity of the world's oceans and primary among the unregulated threats was high seas bottom trawling.

The coalition describes itself as "an alliance of over 40 international organizations, representing millions of people in countries around the world," calling for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling until the nations of the world can establish strong management measures for deep-sea fisheries and protect biodiversity on the high seas.

Such a practice was universally accepted as "the most destructive in use and which wipes out entire ecosystems for the sake of a few commercially valuable species," it said. Scientists estimated if urgent action was not taken to regulate bottom trawling, most deep sea fish stocks on the high seas currently being caught would be commercially extinct in 20 years.

The coalition is calling for UNICPOLOS, the hearing panel, to send a recommendation to the U.N. General Assembly for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling. It would not be the first time.

The turtle restoration project and the game fish association were another pair of advocates out of 281 non-governmental organizations from 62 countries joining 1,007 scientists from 97 countries calling for the moratorium.

The restoration project said industrial longline fishing in the Pacific Ocean annually "catches or kills as many as 4.4 million billfish, sharks, sea turtles, seabirds and marine mammals."

Matthew Gianni, political adviser to the coalition, said the U.N. panel, "cannot simply call for action again, it has to play a part in precipitating it and the ground work is now there for that to happen.

"Countries which had previously opposed and blocked measures to protect the high seas are now changing their positions and we have a real opportunity to finally translate the fine words into a commitment to take concrete action," he said.

The major obstacles to progress have been Iceland and the European Union, led by Spain, the single biggest high seas bottom-trawling nation among nations reporting their catch, the coalition said. However, there has been a strong shift in the stances taken by individual EU countries during the last few months, with Spain accepting that the practice is a highly destructive and proposing limited measures for addressing it.

The Law of the Sea panel was to discuss this week the contribution of fisheries to sustainable development.

Without sustainable and effective management of the world's fisheries and oceans beyond national jurisdiction, deep-sea fisheries, together with many irreplaceable habitats and unique species will be quickly wiped out and many may be lost forever, said Gianni.

"It is high time that the high seas were firmly on the agenda for action. Until the global commons of the high seas are subject to proper management, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing will continue to flourish," he said. "Unless bottom trawling in these areas is controlled, there will be very little left to manage. Tackling bottom trawling is the key to unlocking a genuinely sustainable approach."

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