Fish Mining on The Open Seas

The huge webs of strong nylon mesh, known as drift nets, can cover a slice of ocean up to 40 miles wide and 40 ft. deep. In North Pacific waters, fishermen from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan routinely let the nets float for as long as nine hours at night. They are intended to catch squid, but they also scoop up sea turtles, porpoises, seals, birds and various kinds of fish. Environmentalists call them killer nets and accuse those who use them of "strip-mining" the ocean.

Of particular concern to the U.S. and Canada is the damage inflicted by the nets on North Pacific stocks of sea trout and salmon. U.S. fishing-industry representatives claim that some Asian fishermen have been pulling large numbers of salmon out of nets intended for squid. As a result, they say, fewer young fish return to North American spawning streams.

A 1987 U.S. law called for international cooperation in monitoring catches on the open seas and enforcing fishing constraints. The U.S. and Japan later reached an agreement under which 32 U.S. observers would go aboard 460 Japanese squid-catching vessels to determine their fishing locations and count the number of sea creatures unintentionally killed by their nets. But after U.S. diplomats had worked out the arrangement, National Marine Fisheries Service officials declared it to be insufficiently stringent and called for revisions. Last week Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher told the State Department that the pact was unacceptable and would have to be renegotiated. Japan, however, is unwilling to reopen the negotiations. Japanese fishing officials point out that U.S. salmon fishermen use the same kind of drift nets that Asians do. The American versions, however, are many times smaller.

U.S. officials hope any final agreement reached with Japan will serve as a model for similar deals with Taiwan and South Korea. But they may resist U.S. pressure. Says T.F. Chen, a Taiwanese marine fisheries official: "We could never allow foreign representatives to board and inspect ((our boats)). We can handle the enforcement ourselves."