FISHING boats are destroying Europe鈥檚 cold-water coral reefs, killing off these 鈥渕arine rainforests鈥� before anyone has had a chance to investigate their ecological significance.
Norway, the first nation to declare cold-water reefs as protected areas, is joining forces with environmentalists next week to demand that other nations give the reefs similar protection. They will tell a meeting of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) in Bremen, Germany, that trawlers are destroying huge swathes of reefs covering much of the north-eastern Atlantic seabed. But governments are failing to investigate the extent of the reefs and how much they are being damaged.
Deep-sea trawlers are bringing up 鈥渉uge chunks鈥� of coral from reefs off Ireland and Spain, John Gage of the Scottish Association for Marine Science at Dunstaffnage told 快猫短视频. 鈥淚 think we are in for some very bad discoveries when we eventually start investigating these areas.鈥�
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Cold-water coral, Lophelia pertusa, is widespread across the north-eastern Atlantic from the Faroe islands and Norway to the waters off Spain. Unlike most tropical corals, it needs no light and can survive at temperatures as low as 4 掳C. It occurs typically at depths of 200 to 500 metres.
Lophelia forms scattered colonies as well as large reef complexes. Even small patches are havens for marine life, including sea fans, starfish, sea urchins and sponges, and can act as nurseries for commercially important fish. These coral colonies are thought to play a similar ecological role to their more famous tropical cousins.
A string of research papers in the past year suggest scientists may have 鈥済reatly underestimated鈥� the amount of coral in the Atlantic, Gage says. Meanwhile deep-sea trawlers are destroying large numbers of reefs before they are ever studied. In the Norwegian Sea, one of the few areas that have been researched, trawling has damaged up to half the reefs.
This month, Norway announced plans to protect the thousand-year-old Tisler reef, which its scientists first mapped a year ago. Meanwhile the conservation group WWF called for the UK to fulfil a promise made two years ago to protect the Darwin Mounds, a collection of coral-covered mounds discovered 5 years ago off north-west Scotland. Large areas of seabed in British waters remained unexplored and unprotected, says Gage, including Anton Dohrn, a seamount recently named as the country鈥檚 tallest geological structure, beating the 1340-metre Scottish mountain Ben Nevis.
