Feature story - 18 May, 2005
We've set sail with the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) to explore one of the oldest and least understood habitats on Earth. Using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) - small, unmanned submarines - scientists onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza will study, sample and document the fascinating underwater world off the coast of Scotland.
SAMS Scientist Lyndsey Dodds with live coral sample from Mingulay Reef complex, Inner Hebrides Islands, UK.
The expedition to the Mingulay reef, located in around 150m of
wateroff the west coast of Scotland, will provide vital scientific
data onone of the biggest cold-water coral reef complexes so far
discovered inUK waters.
During the expedition, which set off from Greenock, near
Glasgow, on 12May, scientists will also be looking for any evidence
of damage to thereef. Although the extent of any damage to the
Mingulay reef iscurrently unknown, coral habitats around the world
face many threats -particularly from destructive fishing practices
such as bottomtrawling.
Bottom trawlers drag heavily weighted fishing nets across the
seabed -effectively steamrolling the ocean floor and smashing
everything in theway.
Bottom trawling is the number one threat to fragile cold-water
coralstructures, which provide habitats for a diverse range of
speciesincluding fish, sponges, starfish, sea urchins and
crustaceans. Lophelia reefs also serve as important fish spawning
and nurserygrounds. It takes one year for Lophelia to grow 2.5cm.
It takes justone typical fishing trip for a bottom trawler to sweep
approximately 33square kilometres of the seabed.
We are calling for a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling to
protect ocean life.
More info
Meet the team and
join the expedition through the Esperanza weblog.
Video
Watch the computer-generated video and "fly" over the reef
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ROV feature - explore the reef and see what the ROV has found
so far!
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