In an effort to extend its socialist revolution to the oceans, the government of Hugo Chávez has passed a major fishing-law reform which, to the delight of environmentalists, bans the destructive practice of bottom trawling throughout Venezuelan waters. The reform forms part of a new Law on Fisheries and Aquaculture passed by the National Assembly on March 14. The legislation includes measures such as price controls on fish and a requirement that industrial fishing fleets deliver 5% of their catch to the state for nutrition programs. But the law’s most environmentally significant feature is the ban, starting March 2009, on all bottom-trawl fishing in Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone and territorial waters: an area of 230,000 square miles (600,000 sq kms). The law’s implementing... [Log in to read more]