Congress Passes Legislation to Protect Deep Sea Corals from Fishing Gear

December 9, 2006

WASHINGTON DC – Congress today passed legislation that establishes a new national policy for the conservation of deep sea coral ecosystems. The corals provision is a part of a broader measure to revise the management of federal fisheries within the exclusive economic zone of the United States, a vast oceanic area larger than our nation’s land mass. [1] H.R. 5946, which includes amendments to The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, was approved by the Senate on December 7 and by the House in the final hours of the 109th Congress.  Among other things, H.R. 5946 requires the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to initiate a coordinated deep sea corals research program to identify and map deep sea coral ecosystems, subject to the availability of appropriations; it also gives regional fishery management councils authority to protect areas of the seafloor from any type of fishing gear that damages deep sea coral habitat.  President Bush is expected to sign the legislation.

“We are especially grateful to Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) who championed corals protection legislation in two successive Congresses and ensured that the measure was included in the Senate version of the fisheries bill, and to Senators Stevens (R-AK) and Inouye (D-HI), who ensured that the corals provision was included in the final bill,” said Dr. Elliott Norse, president of Marine Conservation Biology Institute (MCBI).  Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) was the lead Republican cosponsor of the Lautenberg bill, and Representatives Shaw (R-FL), Shays (R-CT), Farr (D-CA) and Pallone (D-NJ) championed identical corals legislation in the House.  Dr. Norse also thanked Representative Joel Hefley who sponsored deep sea corals bills over several Congresses. The dire need for deep sea coral protection has been recently highlighted by the White House at the United Nations in relation to bottom trawling on the high seas. It seems that groups from all ranges of the political spectrum agree that deep sea corals merit significant conservation attention.

MCBI has been a leading voice in the protection and conservation of deep sea corals from human impacts, including deep water bottom trawling, a commercial fishing method that drags heavily weighted nets across the seafloor in search of fishes living near the bottom.  This destructive and unsustainable fishing method scours the seabed and crushes, buries or exposes to predation the many marine species that live in or on the seafloor.  It is the most environmentally destructive form of commercial fishing according to a study published by MCBI in 2003. [2]  Just one pass of a trawl can severely damage hard coral ecosystems; these areas may take hundreds to thousands of years to recover, if at all, due to the slow growing nature of these organisms.  The problem of seafloor destruction by bottom trawls was largely unrecognized until Dr. Norse and Dr. Les Watling exposed the issue in a paper published in the scientific journal Conservation Biology in the late 1990s.

“The bill does not require fishery councils to protect deep sea corals, but it does give them unmistakable discretionary authority to move ahead with deep sea coral protection efforts,” said Bill Chandler, vice president and director of MCBI’s policy office in Washington DC.  According to MCBI chief scientist, Dr. Lance Morgan, “Some councils already have acted to protect some coral areas, including the North Pacific, Pacific and South Atlantic councils.  We support these actions.  However, much more remains to be done if we are to protect vital and unique deep sea coral ecosystems from permanent destruction before we even have a chance to fully understand their true significance. Like their more familiar shallow-water cousins that are found in Hawaii and Florida, deep sea corals are a national resource and should be treated as such.”  MCBI released the first-ever report on the status of US deep sea corals in the summer of 2006. [3]

The environmental campaign to establish deep sea corals protection was led by MCBI and Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization.  MCBI’s work was partly funded by the generous support of the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund and Tiffany and Co. Foundation.  The campaign was significantly assisted by The Marine Fish Conservation Network, which advocated corals protection as one of its recommended improvements to the Magnuson–Stevens fishery management law.

Marine Conservation Biology Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the science of marine conservation biology and promoting cooperation essential to protecting and recovering the Earth's biological integrity.  Founded in 1996, MCBI is headquartered in Bellevue WA, and has offices in Glen Ellen CA and Washington DC.

Go to www.mcbi.org to view MCBI staff biographies and information about marine issues MCBI is working to solve.

[1] The exclusive economic zone is the area lying between 3 and 200 miles from shore, over which the federal government has management authority.

[2] Lance Morgan and Ratana Chuenpagdee, Shifting Gears: Addressing the Collateral Impacts of Fishing Methods in U.S. Waters, 2003.

[3] Lance Morgan, Fan Tsao and John Guinotte, Status of Deep Sea Corals in US Waters, 2006.