HALIFAX, Nova Scotia – Greenpeace wants Canada to take a leadership role in calling for a United Nations moratorium on high seas bottom trawling or dragging.

The environmental group says time is running out to protect delicate deep sea ecosystems – including coral and fish species – that are in danger of being destroyed by fishing nets that scoop up everything on the ocean bottom.

The group says dragging is a major problem in the Northwest Atlantic, just beyond Canada’s 200-mile limit, where an estimated 60 percent of the world’s high seas bottom trawling takes place.

Greenpeace Canada executive director Bruce Cox says it isn’t good enough to leave regulation up to international bodies such as the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. Cox says NAFO is bound by red tape and frequently turns a blind eye to infractions by member countries.

Mark Butler of the Halifax-based Ecology Action Center says the federal government is unwilling to act because Canadian draggers are fishing shrimp and other species on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.

“They’re ready to stand up and challenge other nations, but when something is put forward which may affect our own fishing interests, then there’s much less willingness to act,” he says.

Greenpeace has also sent a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin, urging him to intervene.

Bunny McDiarmid, a New Zealander who campaigns for the organization, says Martin wouldn’t be alone if he changes Canada’s position.

She says momentum for action has been building over the last three years at the United Nations.

“Countries like Costa Rica, Germany, Chile, Austria, Belgium have all moved toward the call for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.”

McDiarmid says a moratorium would give scientists needed time to determine which areas of the world’s oceans are most vulnerable and in need of protection.

She says with no regulations in place, the current situation amounts to a free-for-all.

“It’s been likened to blowing up Mars before we even get there,” says McDiarmid, who adds that fishermen are often getting to areas before the scientists are.

Greenpeace plans to send a vessel to the nose and tail of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland to document the effects of trawling outside the 200-mile limit.

Observers on the Esperanza will monitor what is pulled up in the nets and thrown over as bycatch. The vessel is expected to return to Halifax on Aug. 11 when the group will report its findings.