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Canada: Closure to Protect Deep Water Coral Reef |
| August 16, 2004 |
 | | Unlike colourful tropical corals, the cold-water coral Lophelia is a stark white. Photo: NOAA |
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has closed a rare, cold-water coral reef on the East Coast to all fishing activities that could impact the ocean floor. The new Lophelia Conservation Area will help protect the only known living occurrence in Canadian waters of the coral Lophelia pertusa.
Lophelia is a long-lived, slow-growing coral that forms reef complexes and can support a wide variety of deep-sea life. The reef off the coast of Nova Scotia is made up of both living and dead coral, and has been damaged by fishing activity over the past few decades.
"Protection of this Lophelia reef - a rare and little known species in Canada - is a significant step in protecting biodiversity in our oceans," said the Honourable Geoff Regan, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. "This closure will minimize human impacts on the reef and allow it to recover, which could take decades."
DFO researchers aboard the CCGS Hudson discovered the reef in September 2003. It is about one kilometre long and up to several hundred metres wide. The closure area, located in an offshore region at the mouth of the Laurentian Channel known as the Stone Fence, is approximately 15 square kilometres in size.
Although the closure will affect all bottom-fishing activities, it primarily targets the use of bottom trawls - weighted nets used to collect organisms such as redfish from the ocean floor - and anchored longlines, which use hundreds of weighted hooks attached to an anchored mainline to catch halibut.
This is the latest of several measures by DFO to protect sensitive offshore areas. For example, in 2002 a portion of the Northeast Channel, south of Nova Scotia, was designated a coral conservation area to protect a concentration of large gorgonian corals that grow in bush and tree-like structures. Norway, the European Union and the United States, and the European Union have also implemented steps like fishery closures to protect cold-water corals.
Source: Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre
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