Festival publicity helped change fishing policy.

In the late 1990s, I saw chunks of coral reef being trawled up off the UK at a time when the fishing industry was moving into deeper waters along the European Continental Shelf edge. As a trained marine biologist I was flabbergasted, since the text books said that coral reefs were restricted to warm tropical waters. It turned out that corals were amongst the first life forms discovered during pioneering deep-sea surveys off southwest Ireland in 1869. In fact, at least as many coral species are described from the deep sea as from shallow waters and large, reef-forming corals have been known to occur in the cold waters off Scandanavia since the times of Linnaeus. However, it is only in the past few years that advances in acoustic survey and digital underwater filming technology have allowed us to film and study these deep-water habitats in detail, rather than relying on remote sampling such as with grabs

EFFECTS OF TOWED DEMERSAL FISHING GEAR ON BIOGENIC SEDIMENTS: A 5-YEAR-STUDY

Experimental scallop fishing was carried out using towed commercial dredges on sediments deposited by unattached coralline algae in order to quantify their sensitivity to damage from current fishing practices. These biogenic sediments are patchily distributed in European coastal waters (to -30 m depth around the UK and to -120 m in the Mediterranean) and are of international conservation importance. This paper describes the short and long-term effects of scallop dredging on previously unfished and fished areas of biogenic algal sediment in SW Scotland. Sediment cores taken biannually from 1994-99 were used to assess live coralline abundance on marked test and control plots. Living corallines had \u3c3% cover at a fished site and experimental dredging had no discernible effect on their abundance. Dense populations of live coralline thalli (~20% cover) were located on a previously unfished ground. Although coralline cover remained high in control plots on the unfished site, experimental fishing led to ~ 70% reduction in live corallines on test plots with no signs of recovery over the subsequent 5 years

Upogebia deltaura (Crustacea: Thalassinidea) in Clyde Sea maerl beds, Scotland

Burrows inhabited by Upogebia deltaura (Crustacea: Thalassinidea) were studied over a two-year period on two maerl beds at 10 m below Chart Datum (CD) in the Clyde Sea area, Scotland. Labelled burrows proved to be stable features on each ground, with animals able to withstand the impacts of scallop dredging and storm disturbance by re-building the damaged upper sections of their burrows. Resin casts excavated using an air-lift showed that these burrows were inhabited by single individuals. Burrows were deeper, larger and more complicated than was previously thought typical for U. deltaura and other members of the genus. Mapping of burrow systems revealed average densities of 2.9 ind m-2 with up to ten openings m-2. These elusive animals were the deepest burrowing megafauna (to 68 cm) and the most abundant large crustaceans within the maerl bed habitat

Arctic coral reefs

Recent expeditions to the cold, northern waters of the Arctic have revealed giant deep-sea coral reefs. In this article, Tina Kerby and Jason Hall-Spencer describe the latest findings from a project to study these surprising environments