Petition Target: President Gustavo Noboa, Ecuador

We, the undersigned, applaud the government of Ecuador for its increasing efforts to conserve the Galapagos Marine Reserve and strongly support its designation as a World Heritage Site. However, we urge you not to allow destructive fishing methods, such as longlining, within the Reserve.

The Galapagos Marine Reserve is the second largest marine reserve in the world and home to a wonderful array of marine life, such as whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea birds, sharks, rays and other fauna and flora, much of which is unique to this area.

The Galapagos Islands, renowned throughout the world for their unique biodiversity, are threatened by a proposal to open protected waters to longlining, a method of fishing usually associated with high levels of bycatch and high pressure on fish stocks.



The Marine Reserve is home to a high proportion of species that occur nowhere else on earth. Longlining could be devastating. Given the high numbers of sharks, rays, turtles, sea birds, and sea lions it is inevitable that the bycatch of these animals will be extremely high and will impact populations which are threatened or endangered.



Though the longlines currently being advocated for use inside the Reserve are small-scale, this is unlikely to be economically viable for fishermen used to high returns from sea cucumbers and lobsters. It seems inevitable that pressure would mount to increase the scale and therefore the impact. The history of participatory management in these waters is poor, such as severe overfishing of sea cucumbers, the illegal shark fisheries and riots and vandalism by fishermen against management in the lobster fishery. Opening longlining would likely be an unmitigated disaster.




Sincerely,
The Undersigned