The past decade has seen trawling operations expand along the edge of the North East Atlantic continental shelf, as stocks of shelf-dwelling species such as cod have declined. As a substitute, markets are being developed for very strange-looking deep-water species such as roundnose grenadier (Coryphaenoides rupestris), orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus), black scabbard fish (Aphanopus carbo) and deep-sea sharks (Centrophorus squamosus and Centroscymnus coelolepis). The problem is that this expansion in deep-water fisheries goes on unregulated, and it is causing long-term disturbance to seabed habitats and fish stocks alik

Hall-Spencer, J

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School of Biological and Marine Sciences Faculty of Science and Engineering 2002-06-01 Our very own coral reef crisis J Hall-Spencer School of Biological and Marine Sciences Let us know how access to this document benefits you General rights All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact the library providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Follow this and additional works at: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/bms-research Recommended Citation Hall-Spencer, J. (2002) 'Our very own coral reef crisis', Marine Conservation, 5(7), pp. 10-11. Retrieved from https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/bms-research/439 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty of Science and Engineering at PEARL. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Biological and Marine Sciences by an authorized administrator of PEARL. For more information, please contact openresearch@plymouth.ac.uk. Fishing PerspectiveOn typical 15-day trips, trawlers sweep about 33 km2 ofcontinental shelf-break (the edge of the continental shelf)habitat. Although the fishers do not deliberately target deep-water corals, and indeed try to avoid dense coral reefs, damagedoes occur. French deep-water fishermen target sedimentaryareas on the upper part of the continental slope. Out of 229trawls observed in 1995-97, only 5 were notable for containinglarge amounts of coral by-catch. The corals caused poorer catchquality and damaged the nets, which had to be repaired beforethe gear was reused. Hamish Morrison, Chief Executive of the ScottishFishermen’s Federation, says corals also damage the nets of theUK monkfish fleet. He calls for closer co-operation between thefishing industry and EU governments to prevent both long-termecological damage and damage to fishing gear.The realisation of the extent of damage to deep-watercorals off Norway, and also off Tasmania, Australia, led to arapid response from national governments. In Norway, fishersfirst warned of widespread reef damage by trawlers in 1994, leading to ROV surveys and then areal closures to prevent long-term ecological damage to selected coral reefs in 1999.The Need for Action The problems in EU waters described in this article emphasise that conservation areas are urgently needed to protect coralreefs within the Exclusive Economic Zone of EU waters; andthat the EU and the member state Governments are being fartoo slow to react. In 1999, the UK High Court ruled that the EC HabitatsDirective (92/43/EEC), which covers reefs in Annex 1, applies tothe UK Continental Shelf waters up to a limit of 200 nauticalmiles. In October 2001, Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State forthe Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)announced that the Darwin Mounds, an area off northwestScotland that is rich in cold-water corals, was expected to bethe first offshore site to be confirmed as a Special Area ofConservation. However, the deep-water reefs of all EU countriesstill remain unprotected from current industrial fishingpractices.Areas where corals are known to be at risk of damage,such as NW Rockall and the recently described DarwinMounds (see Marine Conservation Summer 2001)should be afforded legislative protection as soonas possible.There is also an urgent need for DEFRA,Government Conservation Agencies andthe EC Fisheries Department to workclosely with the fishing industry tominimize long-term environmentaldamage to deep-sea habitats.One powerful tool which couldbe employed for protection inoffshore waters is the recentagreement made between EUmember states, the Faroes,Iceland, Greenland, Russia andNorway to satellite-track all vessels >24m (Article 3, Regulation (EEC) 2847/93).Concerted action of various kinds is needed toprotect our very own coral reefs.Further reading: Jason Hall-Spencer, Valerie Allain & Jan Helge Fossa (2002)Trawling Damage to Northeast Atlantic Ancient Coral ReefsProceedings of the Royal Society, London B p.507Information on Lophelia Pertusa can be found at the website ofthe Scottish Association for Marine Science www.sams.ac.ukThe leaflet ‘A Dead-end for Deepwater Fish’ is available from MCS Jason can be contacted at University Marine Biological Station,Millport. Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland, KA28 0EGgbfa20@udcf.gla.ac.ukOur very ownCoral Reef CrisisJason Hall-Spencer10      marine CONSERVATION Vol 5, NO 7 • Summer 2002 marine CONSERVATION Vol 5, NO 7 • Summer 2002 11The past decade has seen trawling operations expand alongthe edge of the North East Atlantic continental shelf, asstocks of shelf-dwelling species such as cod have declined.As a substitute, markets are being developed for verystrange-looking deep-water species such as roundnosegrenadier (Coryphaenoides rupestris), orange roughy(Hoplostethus atlanticus), black scabbard fish (Aphanopuscarbo) and deep-sea sharks (Centrophorus squamosus andCentroscymnus coelolepis). The problem is that thisexpansion in deep-water fisheries goes onunregulated, and it is causing long-termdisturbance to seabed habitats and fishstocks alike.Coral Reefs in the North Atlantic? Most of us associate coral reefswith warm, well-lit waters offtropical coasts, and the onlyhard coral I’d seen whilst divingin the UK was Caryophylliasmithii (the Devonshire cup coral),which grows to about 1.5 cmdiameter. But on a visit to the Universityof Brest in France, I was shown an amazingcollection of corals by Valerie Allain, a PhD student studyingdeep-sea fish. Some of the corals were the size of filingcabinets, so I first assumed that they must have come from thetropics. It turned out that Valerie’s huge colonial corals hadbeen trawled up during commercial fishing hauls at depths of840-1300 m off the west coast of Ireland. Deep-water corals occur world-wide and have been knownby fishermen and benthic ecologists for centuries. However,they remain poorly studied and it is not until the past five yearsthat video material from manned and unmanned submersibleshas started to show a wider audience just how spectacularthese reefs can be. One of the more familiar species is Lopheliapertusa, but at least four others have been by-caught in watersoff West Ireland. The Problem with Deep-water TrawlingDeep-water coral reefs take centuries and even millennia tobuild up, only to be destroyed when they are taken as bycatchin fisheries along with a range of other animal species. Table 1shows the entire vertebrate catch from a coral-rich haul takenrecently in the Rockall Trough. It shows just how wasteful deep-water trawling can be, as most of the fish were discarded. Inaddition, habitat damage has to be very long-term, as theaccompanying by-caught corals were determined as being over4,550 years old!The same problem occurs off Norway. Jan Helge Fossa, ofthe Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, recently used aremotely operated vehicle (ROV) to survey two cold water coralreefs at 200m depth in West Norway. The first site had beenintensely trawled for redfish (mostly Sebastes marinus) andsaithe (Pollachius virens) during the 1990s. The second site wasuntrawled. The trawled area had sparse living coral coloniesthat were often broken, dislodged and sometimes buried inmud. Looking at photo 1, one sees trenches (5-10 cm deep) leftby otter boards, providing unmistakable evidence of trawlingactivity. Coral rubble litters the whole area, and scrape-markson the sediment surface show where boulders and coral hadbeen dragged along the seabed by trawl gear. This contrastsstarkly with the untrawled area (photo 2) that had no visibletrawl scars and instead has prominent expanses of erect, livecoral reefs. The untrawled habitat has a greater relief and three-dimensional complexity than the trawled reef, and more sessilefilter-feeding macrofauna such as large Mycale sponges.Acoustic surveys, too, have raised serious concerns aboutthe ecological effects of deep-water trawl fisheries. Trawl marksnow criss-cross the seabed at 200-1400m depth all along theNE Atlantic shelf-break area from Ireland, Scotland and Norway.These trawl scars are up to 4 km long and characterised byparallel trenches where otter doors, rockhopper gear and netshave damaged epifauna, dragged rocks and turned-oversediment. Jan Helge FossaCommon name Taxon Number Weight (kg)Roundnose grenadier * Coryphaenoides 480 400rupestris Roundnose grenadier C. rupestris 902 407(small discards) Orange roughy * Hoplostethus 80 200atlanticusLeafscale gulper shark * Centrophorussquamosus 27 150Portuguese dogfish * CentroscymnuscoelolepisBaird’s smooth-head Alepocephalusbairdii 750 2400North Atlantic codling Lepidion eques 50 18Smalleyed rabbitfish Hydrolagus affinis 37 16Spearnose chimaera Rhinochimaera 4 24atlanticaRoughnose grenadier Trachyrincus murrayi 325 80  Spearsnouted grenadier Caelorinchus labiatus 125 31Dogfish sharks Squalidae 216 351Risso’s smooth-head Alepocephalus 6 -rostratusPallid sculpin Cottunculus thomsonii 2 - Pudgy cuskeel Spectrunculus grandis 1 -  Photo 1. Trawled Lophelia pertusa grounds at 200 m inthe Iverryggen area, W Norway, May 1999. Smashedcoral fragments litter the sediment around a cleartrench from towed fishing gear (arrow). Lower edge ofphotograph ca 1.5 m.Photo 2. Untrawled Lophelia pertusa interspersed withMycale sponges standing erect to form a prominentreef at 200 m, Nordleksa, W Norway, May 1999. Loweredge of photograph ca 2.5 m.Jan Helge FossaJan Helge FossaDeepwater targets: Roundnosegrenadier and opposite, orange roughyB.ClarkeB.Clarke}Table 1: Vertebrate catch from a coral-rich haul at 1270 m inthe Rockall Trough, W. Ireland, March 1996. * indicates specieslanded commercially.COREMetadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.ukProvided by Plymouth Electronic Archive and Research Library

Our very own coral reef crisis

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Our very own coral reef crisis

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