Good News for Scottish Coral Reef

After eight years of lobbying from environmental groups, the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) and the European Union have named two deep-water corals reefs off the coast of Scotland off limits to fishermen that use bottom trawling to catch such fish as sea bass and snapper, as well as rock and calico shrimp. Bottom trawling poses a dire threat to coral that live on the bottom of the sea floor and provide critical habitat for many other species.

The Rockall and Hatton Banks are two such reefs that lie 400 kilometers off the coast of Scotland in the Hebrides Sea. These two formations, which are about 100 miles long and up to fifteen feet high, as reported in the Herald, reach also about 100 feet wide, and are home to the endangered Rockall haddock, as well as sea fans, sponges, starfish, sea urchins, and crustaceans.

Deep-water coral does not garner the attention of its warm-water cousins as they cannot display themselves to the casual snorkeler. Deep-water coral are only now being studied in depth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the biggest threat to these coral is the destructive nature of bottom trawling.

Bottom trawling involves dragging weighted nets across the sea floor in hopes of catching what the fishing boat is looking for. This method of fishing has been decried by most of the scientific community as it increases by-catch, or the other species that are taken up in the nets that are not commercially-favored species. These are often thrown back, and in the case of coral, the action of being ripped from the ocean floor kills the coral.

Another Scottish reef was named as a protected area recently. The Darwin Mounds, named for the famous scientist and writer, will now be joined by the Rockall and Hatton Banks as off-limits to bottom trawling. Five other reefs were also protected in Norwegian waters and off the Azores.

The World Wildlife Fund announced the new protections for the Scottish coral, and cites their work along with the Scottish Fisherman's Federation drawing up the plan that the NEAFC and the EU adopted and put into place to stop the further destruction of coral that may be up to 10,000 years old. The United Nations had discussed prohibiting all bottom-trawling in deep water last year, but failed to implement the ban.

The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition is made up of several groups that are working to stop all bottom trawling. Such groups include Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Friends of the Earth, to name just a few. In 2004, over one thousand scientists presented a statement at both the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that called for a stop to bottom-trawling.

The newly-protected Scottish reefs could help support the larger cause of stopping all bottom trawling. Unfortunately, as fish stocks become more and more depleted, fishing boats are moving into deeper and deeper waters to catch their prey. Also, the NOAA blames some coral loss on deep-sea oil and gas exploration.