Environmental groups celebrated on Wednesday after US authorities approved a proposal to ban bottom-tending fishing in 38,000 square miles of ocean off the United States’ Atlantic coast.
The vote by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is aimed at protecting deep-sea corals that environmentalists say are hundreds of years old but can be destroyed by fishing nets in seconds. Rick Robins, the council chairman, described it as a “historic move for habitat conservation”.
The council’s vote will be submitted as a recommendation to the US commerce secretary and, if approved, could become law in 2016.
Gib Brogan of the conservation group Oceana applauded the vote and said apart from their beauty corals formed a fundamental part of the ocean’s ecosystem that was not yet fully understood, with scientists frequently discovering new species living amongst them.
In voting for the ban, the council became the first such US authority to use powers granted by President George Bush in 2007 to set catch limits and prevent over-fishing.
The council also becomes the first to vote in the explicit interest of natural habitat and coral conservation first and foremost; rather than aiming to enhance the sustainability of commercial fisheries, with reef protection as a knock-on effect.
“Here, they are protecting them just because they are corals, just because they are unique,” Brogan said.
This was good news for bubblegum coral and the Dumbo octopus, two inhabitants of the Atlantic’s deep seas, but the fishing industry has voiced concern. In a letter submitted as a comment ahead of this week’s council vote, Michael Burnham, a crew member with the Seafreeze fishery, pleaded against the ban. “I have mouths to feed,” Burnham wrote by hand under his signature.
Robins, the council chairman, said the push to ban trawl and dredge fishing was mostly precautionary, with little currently happening in the area, but conceded some activities would be affected.
