It is said that an area of 23,000-square-mile stretching from North Carolina to Florida is
just part of that entire reef tract now being proposed for protection from potential damage by deep-sea commercial fishing and energy exploration. This stretch of coral reef is been relatively untouched by man because of its largely unreachable depths, providing scientists a unique opportunity to protect an ecosystem before it’s destroyed.
Steve Ross of the Center for Marine Science at UNC Wilmington, is leading a four-part research cruise that began Aug. 6 with the purpose of studying these deep-sea environments, hoping to find new species of fish, crab and corals that could lead to scientific and medical discoveries.
According to the environmentalists crab pots and bottom trawling for shrimp are the most immediate threats. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is pushing the proposal to protect the region, about the size of West Virginia, in depths down to 2,500 feet and below, creating the largest deep-water coral protected area off the Atlantic Coast. Although fishermen have for centuries dragged up corals from the deep sea, it wasn’t until the early 1900s that scientists discovered that these extensive cold-water reefs existed.
Ross said that the importance of such amazing discovery would be realize after 10 years from now and a lot of pharmaceuticals come from a tropical rain-forest environment. The same people are looking for these in the deep sea, and there are expectations that there will be drugs made that could potentially provide cures for some types of cancer.
It is observed that the deep-water reefs also are seen as indicators of the ocean’s overall health; because they are so remote, it takes longer for phenomenon such as climate change to affect them. Liz Baird of the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences said that most in the fishing industry agree that protecting these reefs is good for business.
