ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization must immediately devise a recovery plan for threatened cod stocks on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks because fishing bans alone have failed, says a World Wildlife Fund Canada report released Wednesday.

"Overfishing has continued and these particular stocks have been decimated,'' said Robert Rangeley, director of the environmental group's Atlantic marine program.

"They're essentially commercially extinct. You can no longer fish them viably.''

The 64-page report also recommends that corals and other areas vulnerable to trawling be protected, and pushes for stronger enforcement of global fishing laws.

NAFO, the body that manages fisheries in international waters outside Canada's 200-nautical-mile limit, must reduce allowable bycatches, Rangeley said.

"If you take the southern Grand Banks example, that fishery was closed in 1994,'' Rangeley said in an interview from Halifax.

"Every year after that time, mortality continued to increase as a result of bycatch. The levels of bycatch increased year after year after year, and in 2003 it was about 80 per cent of the remaining population.

"Clearly we're not removing the pressure. We're closing it to commercial fishing, but the reality is they're still being fished in other means.''

In recent years, illegal fishing on the Grand Banks has been passed off as accidental bycatch -- a process where fish are caught by gear intended for other species.

Various environmental groups and some federal government officials have criticized NAFO's ability to stop overfishing. NAFO has started a blacklist of countries that overfish, but it doesn't extend to NAFO member nations, such as Portugal and Spain.

This year, Canada handed out at least 14 citations to mostly Spanish and Portuguese vessels caught breaking the rules outside Canada's limit.

NAFO sets quotas and standards for fishing in the region, but doesn't have the teeth to crack down on rogue vessels. It's left up to the country of the offending boat to apply sanctions, which doesn't always happen.

Earlier this year, Canada and the European Union agreed to do joint patrols of the northwest Atlantic. Canada spends about $30 million annually in surveillance of fishing areas.

World Wildlife Fund Canada released its report two weeks before NAFO's annual meeting in Dartmouth, N.S., part of which will focus on fisheries management on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks.

"If NAFO fails to take reform seriously, there is tremendous international pressure for some other drastic action,'' Rangeley said.

"There are alternatives out there, but they're not very pretty ones.''