Govt lauded for legislating on marine life conservation

Karachi

Organisations working for conservation of marine life in Pakistan on Friday welcomed the Sindh government’s effort to legislate over the long overdue and crucial protection of marine and freshwater resources.

As per amendments, in the Sindh Fisheries Ordinance, 1980, catching small-sized marine and freshwater fish, berried lobsters, crab and freshwater shrimp was now banned.

The amendments also aimed at imposing a ban on capturing some threatened, protected or endangered species including sawfish, sharks, rays, guitarfish, dolphins, whales and turtles. 

The World Wide Fund-Pakistan (WWF-Pakistan) congratulated the chief minister, secretary livestock and fisheries department and director general (fisheries) Government of Sindh for proactively taking interest in the legislation; it would help conserve marine resources, many of which were under serious threat of being over exploited, read their statement. 

Use of deleterious fishing gears, relentless trawling and capturing breeding females were some of the major threats marine life in Sindh was facing.

A phenomenal decrease in fish catch had forced fishermen to catch small fish, which consequently resulted in production of low quality fishmeal for local poultry industry and for export.

However, implementation of the legislation would help in recovery of fish stocks and overall biodiversity of the marine environment.

Pakistan was signatory to a number of international conventions according to which it was necessary for the country to legislate over the issue.

The legislation would serve as an insurance for compliance of the instruments as it includes ban on catching some other endangered shark species, whale sharks, mobulid rays, sawfish, turtles and cetaceans (including whales and dolphins).

As a member of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), Pakistan required to ensure that tuna fishing boats did not catch silky sharks, oceanic white-tip shark, thresher shark, hammerhead shark and whale shark as well as mobulid.

WWF-Pakistan also appreciated inclusion of some freshwater species which were heavily exploited, specially catching juveniles of commercially important species including carps, snakeheads, catfish and river shad. Catching juvenile River Shad had interfered in the pattern of migration of the iconic specie, and had also resulted in declination of their stocks in lower reaches of the river Indus.