KARACHI, Nov 25: The Pakistan Deep-Sea Fishing Trawlers Operators Association has opposed further amendment to the new national deep-sea policy as proposed by the Sindh government.

The Association’s president Kamran Hameed said that under the new deep-sea policy zones of fishing were clearly defined for small-scale and industrial fishing.

He maintained that the new policy was vetted by various ministries and approved by the president in a cabinet meeting and therefore should not be altered.

According to him, it is the most transparent policy to date and contains more than adequate safeguards for conserving fish stocks and protecting the rights of coastal fishermen.

He argued that the areas of operations of deep-sea trawlers and wooden boats were different, saying that the nation would face a great loss by not exploiting its deep-sea resources.

Mr Kamran said that wooden boats could not bottom trawl in depth of more than 20 fathoms due to short length of fishing nets and inadequate powers of their small marine engines.

Consequently, he said, marine resources beyond 6 to 8 miles from the coast were being wasted as they were not harvested by any Pakistani fisheries sector.

He said the loss of millions of dollars in unexploited fish resources was caused by vested interests who did not care for national gain.

He said the nation was looking for early implementation of the new policy which would result in greater export earning by tapping those unexploited marine resources which were being totally wasted.