deap-sea trawling destroys the little mermaid's castle

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Deep-Sea Trawling Destroying Underwater Mountains

 

November 15, 2006 — By Patricia Reaney, Reuters

LONDON — Deep-sea trawling is destroying underwater mountains teeming with

marine life and causing irreparable damage to ecosystems, scientists warned on

Wednesday.

 

Most of the underwater volcanic mountains, or seamounts, which contain deep-sea

corals and are home to thousands of marine species, are in unregulated areas.

 

Over-exploitation of traditional fish such as cod and hake has prompted fleets

to trawl the high seas for deep-dwelling species such as orange roughy,

alfonsino and roundnose grenadier, but they are harming biodiversity in

vulnerable regions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

 

" There is an urgency, first of all, to deal with regulating those fisheries and

secondly to get out there and look at those habitats before they are gone, " said

Dr Alex Rogers, of the Zoological Society of London and a co-author of the

report.

 

" Fish hundreds of years old are being decimated as a result of this trawling, "

he told a news briefing.

 

The report will be presented at the United Nations, which is debating a plan to

ban deep sea bottom-trawling in unregulated areas. It reveals new findings about

the underwater mountains, some of which rise 1,000 metres (yards) from the sea

floor, and the creatures that thrive on them.

 

The precise number of large seamounts worldwide is unknown. It is estimated to

be around 100,000 but Rogers said scientific information exists on only about

40.

 

The report used coral records on seamounts and global data sets on environmental

factors and computer modelling to plot the potential global distribution of

stony corals on seamounts and areas particularly vulnerable to deep sea

trawling.

 

It says more commercial fishing for alfonsino and orange roughy in the

central-eastern Southern Indian Ocean, in the South Atlantic and in some regions

of the southern-central Pacific Ocean are likely to have a negative impact on

seamount ecosystems.

 

Matthew Gianni, a fisheries expert and author of a report on the impact of trawl

fisheries and their impact, told the briefing that 11 countries are responsible

for 95 percent of high seas bottom-trawling.

 

Spain, which has the largest fleet, had about 40 percent of the bottom trawl

catch in 2001, followed by Russia with 14 percent, Portugal, Estonia and Norway

with 7 percent each.

 

The bottom-trawl catch in 2001 was valued at $280 million to $320 million, or

about 0.5 percent of world marine catch.

 

Source: Reuters

 

 

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