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B.C.'s deep-sea corals, sponges at risk
Environmental group calls for prohibition on deep-sea trawling in areas off coast

Nicholas Read
Vancouver Sun

Monday, August 08, 2005

B.C. is losing its deep-sea corals and sponges at an unsustainable rate, and unless measures are taken to stop their destruction, the province will lose them entirely, according to an environmental group dedicated to protecting the province's sea coast.

Research done by the Living Oceans Society says that between 1996 and 2004, commercial deep-sea trawlers pulled up 322 tonnes of corals and sponges from the ocean floor as part of their commercial bycatch, and then tossed them overboard.

Instead, the society, which based its findings on data collected by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), wants the DFO to establish 12 protected areas from Barkley Canyon on the southeastern shore of Vancouver Island, to Learmonth Bank at the northernmost tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands, where deep-sea trawling would be prohibited.

If it did, says the society, the bycatch of corals and sponges would be reduced by as much as 97 per cent, even though the affected area represents no more than seven per cent of B.C.'s total continental shelf and slope.

"These areas would be like marine protected areas," says Jeff Ardron, a marine analyst for the Living Oceans Society, and the lead researcher on the project. "And they will have huge benefits over time. We know from research done on other protected areas that fish grow bigger in them and have more offspring, so that would be of significant economic benefit as well."

Tony Pitcher, a professor of fisheries at the University of B.C., agrees. He says it's likely that as much as 30 per cent of all the province's corals and sponges have been destroyed inadvertently by commercial fishermen in the last 50 years, with most of that destruction taking place in the last decade.

So he says the society is right to call for a trawling ban.

"I think it's very reasonable," he said of the society's report. "It doesn't exaggerate. It's a good scientific document. It's all solid stuff."

DFO spokesperson Carrie Mishima said department representatives are studying the report, but she couldn't say whether any of its recommendations would be adopted.

However, she did say that in 2002, trawler fishing was prohibited on four sites around the Queen Charlotte Islands to protect four Hexactinellid sponge reefs, home to what are thought to be the world's oldest living creatures.

Also known as glass sponges, they are believed to be more than 9,000 years old.

Ardron says that's true, but it took 13 years after the sponges' discovery in 1989 for an enforced ban to be implemented, and in the meantime -- when a voluntary closure was in place -- huge portions of the reefs were destroyed.

"Some of the fishermen were 'fear' fishing," said Ardron. "That is, they were over-fishing an area they believed would be permanently closed one day."

Corals -- which are in fact composed of tiny, fragile animals called coral polyps -- and sponges -- animals that lack internal organs and channel water through canals in their bodies -- are important, Pitcher says, because they act as places for juvenile fish to hide from predators. Thus they provide habitat for those fish to thrive and eventually grow to a size where they can be caught by fishermen.

By failing to protect them, Pitcher says, those fishermen "are cutting their own throats."

nread@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2005