Irish coral reefs bulldozed
by Wendy Barnaby
Coral reefs lie in blue, sun-baked waters, right?
Wrong.
In the cold, deep water off the west coast of Ireland, scientists have found spectacular coral reefs – and they’re being horribly damaged by deep-water fishermen.
Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist from the University of Plymouth, got himself a place on the German research vessel Polarstern’s expedition in 2003. She sailed up the west coast of Ireland and on to the Arctic, and Dr Hall-Spencer took video footage of the reefs along the way.
‘Few people realise that we have such interesting, precious and dramatic habitats right on our doorstep,’ he says. ‘Some of these areas have yet to be explored, but even before we’ve had a chance to see their treasures, they’re being bulldozed by deep-water trawling. It’s crucial that we take steps to protect the coral reefs before it’s too late.’
The reefs in Dr Hall-Spencer’s videos lie 85 km offshore at a depth of 1 km, although they extend down as far as 3 km. The water is cold – between 40C and 120C – and there is very little light. Some reefs are older than 8500 years. They were found in the late 1990s by oil prospectors in what looked like huge humps in the sea.
Cold-water coral is formed by thousands of polyps in large colonies. Dr Hall-Spencer’s videos are of Lophelia pertusa. ‘Lophelia’ means a tuft of suns: the thousands of polyps that form the coral colony. The coral waves tentacles in the water, stunning any food particle or animal which touches them by injecting them with poison. Ingesting the thick soup of food where layers of different water density meet, the coral grows into massive reefs which provide a home for myriads of other animals such as worms, sponges and fish.
There are thousands of creatures on the reefs in an intricate ecology. Dr Hall-Spencer filmed bristly worms which live in tubes, animals protected by opposing shells, attached to dead coral with fine strings they secrete, and ungainly squat lobsters. But amongst the bounty are also commercially-valuable redfish.
As fishermen take to ever-deeper waters, the heavy gear on their modern boats is doing untold damage to the reefs. The boats drag a large, cone-shaped net which is held open by big steel doors weighing up to 6 tonnes. When the boat drags these over the sea floor, they and the rest of the gear strip the floor of everything: reefs and their life alike.
‘About 40% of what we filmed had been smashed up,’ says Dr Hall-Spencer. ‘They smash corals 4500 years old. Their nets plough through anything that’s fragile. They wipe out fish and there’s no longer any habitat for them to breed.’
Some scientists say that any damage occurring now may take many hundreds, if not thousands, of years to recover.
Cold-water corals are widely distributed and found in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Some governments have begun to take measures to protect them. At the annual meeting of the parties to the OSPAR Convention (for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic) this June, Ireland announced that it plans to conserve its cold-water coral reefs by nominating four sites in Irish waters as marine protected areas.
Dr Hall-Spencer would like to see an existing satellite system used to track fishing boats and to sound an alarm if they stray into protected areas. The Vessel Monitoring System is currently used on all EU fishing boats longer than 15m – the very ones most likely to fish in deep waters.
‘The idea would be to have exclusion areas around the world’s best examples of deep-water habitat, like the pristine coral reefs off Ireland,’ says Dr Hall-Spencer. Fishing with trawled gear would not be allowed in these areas.
‘This would protect habitats where fish aggregate to breed and would benefit the industry by helping ensure that it’s sustainable and avoiding unnecessary damage to their gear,’ he adds.
Dr Hall-Spencer’s talk is one of the BA Award Lectures to be presented at this year’s BA Festival of Science. The talk will be webcast live at at 12.45 on Monday 5 September.
Images courtesy of the Alfred Wegener Institute and the French Marine Research Institute (IFREMER).
Coral reefs lie in blue, sun-baked waters, right?
Wrong.
In the cold, deep water off the west coast of Ireland, scientists have found spectacular coral reefs – and they’re being horribly damaged by deep-water fishermen.
Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist from the University of Plymouth, got himself a place on the German research vessel Polarstern’s expedition in 2003. She sailed up the west coast of Ireland and on to the Arctic, and Dr Hall-Spencer took video footage of the reefs along the way.
‘Few people realise that we have such interesting, precious and dramatic habitats right on our doorstep,’ he says. ‘Some of these areas have yet to be explored, but even before we’ve had a chance to see their treasures, they’re being bulldozed by deep-water trawling. It’s crucial that we take steps to protect the coral reefs before it’s too late.’
The reefs in Dr Hall-Spencer’s videos lie 85 km offshore at a depth of 1 km, although they extend down as far as 3 km. The water is cold – between 40C and 120C – and there is very little light. Some reefs are older than 8500 years. They were found in the late 1990s by oil prospectors in what looked like huge humps in the sea.
Cold-water coral is formed by thousands of polyps in large colonies. Dr Hall-Spencer’s videos are of Lophelia pertusa. ‘Lophelia’ means a tuft of suns: the thousands of polyps that form the coral colony. The coral waves tentacles in the water, stunning any food particle or animal which touches them by injecting them with poison. Ingesting the thick soup of food where layers of different water density meet, the coral grows into massive reefs which provide a home for myriads of other animals such as worms, sponges and fish.
There are thousands of creatures on the reefs in an intricate ecology. Dr Hall-Spencer filmed bristly worms which live in tubes, animals protected by opposing shells, attached to dead coral with fine strings they secrete, and ungainly squat lobsters. But amongst the bounty are also commercially-valuable redfish.
As fishermen take to ever-deeper waters, the heavy gear on their modern boats is doing untold damage to the reefs. The boats drag a large, cone-shaped net which is held open by big steel doors weighing up to 6 tonnes. When the boat drags these over the sea floor, they and the rest of the gear strip the floor of everything: reefs and their life alike.
‘About 40% of what we filmed had been smashed up,’ says Dr Hall-Spencer. ‘They smash corals 4500 years old. Their nets plough through anything that’s fragile. They wipe out fish and there’s no longer any habitat for them to breed.’
Some scientists say that any damage occurring now may take many hundreds, if not thousands, of years to recover.
Cold-water corals are widely distributed and found in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Some governments have begun to take measures to protect them. At the annual meeting of the parties to the OSPAR Convention (for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic) this June, Ireland announced that it plans to conserve its cold-water coral reefs by nominating four sites in Irish waters as marine protected areas.
Dr Hall-Spencer would like to see an existing satellite system used to track fishing boats and to sound an alarm if they stray into protected areas. The Vessel Monitoring System is currently used on all EU fishing boats longer than 15m – the very ones most likely to fish in deep waters.
‘The idea would be to have exclusion areas around the world’s best examples of deep-water habitat, like the pristine coral reefs off Ireland,’ says Dr Hall-Spencer. Fishing with trawled gear would not be allowed in these areas.
‘This would protect habitats where fish aggregate to breed and would benefit the industry by helping ensure that it’s sustainable and avoiding unnecessary damage to their gear,’ he adds.
Dr Hall-Spencer’s talk is one of the BA Award Lectures to be presented at this year’s BA Festival of Science. The talk will be webcast live at at 12.45 on Monday 5 September.
Images courtesy of the Alfred Wegener Institute and the French Marine Research Institute (IFREMER).
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