The Coalition for Fisheries Transparency, a coalition of civil organizations promoting transparency and accountability in fisheries governance, has added to a recent call by a number of major seafood groups pushing the U.K. to adopt the 2012 Cape Town Agreement for the Safety of Fishing Vessels, known more commonly as the Cape Town Agreement.
In May, a number of seafood groups called on the U.K. to ratify the agreement, which addresses safety onboard fishing vessels – including vessel construction and safety equipment. In 2019, 48 countries signed a public declaration that they intended to bring the Cape Town Agreement into force by October 2022, which would only happen after at least 22 member states, with a total of 3,600 fishing vessels over 24 meters in length fishing on the high seas, ratified the agreement.
Conservation organizations have accused countries of failing to follow through on the agreement for years, which currently has 23 states in agreement. However, those states do not contain enough combined fishing vessels to meet the second requirement, meaning it is still not in force.
A number of businesses and organizations, including FishWise and American Tuna, called on the U.K. to ratify the agreement during the United Nations Ocean Conference, being held in Nice, France, from 9 to 13 June, as a way of ...
