Destructive fishing practices are practices that easily result in irreversible damage to aquatic habitats and ecosystems. Many fishing techniques can be destructive if used inappropriately, but some practices are particularly likely to result in irreversible damage. These practices are mostly, though not always, illegal (see also illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing). Where they are illegal, they are often inadequately enforced. Overview The narrowest definition of destructive fishing practices refers principally to bottom trawling over vulnerable habitat (shallow corals, deep sea corals, or seagrass, for example), as well as practices such as shark finning, blast fishing, poison fishing, muro-ami, and push netting. These latter practices are not significant within the fishing zones of most developed nations, being generally outlawed. A wider and more useful definition would include: overfishing beyond reasonable recovery limits, including serial overfishing; excessive or damaging levels of bycatch ; the fishing of spawning aggregations without precautionary justification ; intensive fishing over vulnerable habitats, including for example spawning and nursery areas; and highgrading–the practice of discarding the lower quality portion of the target catch. This definition could be extended to cover activities such as: ghost fishing by lost or discarded gear, shark netting of popular swimming beaches (with high incidental catch), amateur use of fish aggregating devices or traps where they increase the likelihood of locally unsustainable catch levels, spearfishing at night or with SCUBA, as well as 'industrial' spearfishing, use of stainless steel hooks or traps; commercial and recreational use of gill nets and traps with high incidental kill, and deliberate (and sometimes illegal) destruction of marine life perceived as “getting in the way” of fishing operations. History The term "destructive fishing practices" (or DFPs) has been featured in international fisheries literature since about the 1980s. No widely accepted definition of the phrase exists, and this will almost certainly remain the situation, given very different national and industry perspectives. The Outcomes and Implementation Statements of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in 2002, contain a commitment to phasing out destructive fishing practices in the marine environment by the year 2012. All nations attending the summit supported this statement. Many nations had made commitments to end destructive fishing practices much earlier. In 1999, 124 nations explicitly gave their support to the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries 1995 through the Rome Declaration on Responsible Fisheries. The list of these nations includes most of the major