Seamounts amid fields
of rubble, scars and lost gear.
A glimmer of hope.
Seamounts are underwater mountains that rise at least 1,000 meters above the seafloor with their peaks hundreds or even thousands of meters underwater. Seamounts are often thriving areas of marine life, based around high levels of plankton and deep-sea corals.
However the fishing practice of trawling can decimate these areas, destroying corals and causing huge population crashes in the species that depend on them. Deep-sea coral growth rates can be as little as micrometres a year meaning that recovery, if possible, could be very slow. As a result it’s unknown whether protecting areas damaged by trawling is worthwhile or whether once lost these deep-sea communities are unlikely to recover.
New research by Baco et al. (2019) sheds comforting light on this dimly known area. Whilst little evidence supports seamount recovery over 10 years, their study examined recovery following 30-40 years protection from trawling. Encouragingly many of the sites surveyed showed multiple signs of recovery, including coral regrowth and higher levels of animal life compared to areas still being trawled. The research is clear and much needed evidence to support continued seamount protection efforts.
Author’s note: I thought that the research study’s title was too poetic to improve upon so used part of it in this sciku. The full title is ‘Amid fields of rubble, scars, and lost gear, signs of recovery observed on seamounts on 30- to 40-year time scales’ by Amy R. Baco, E. Brendan Roark and Nicole B. Morgan.
Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw4513