Local news agency confirms that the authorities have taken new steps to protect ocean floor. It si said that a few miles from the south-east Florida coast, at a depth of crushing pressure and frigid temperatures, lies an eerie world of snowy coral, undiscovered forms of life and rock towers thrusting through ink-dark water. To maintain still-pristine ecosystem the federal government is considering protecting a stretch of ocean floor from the Florida Keys to North Carolina, an area six times the size of Yellowstone National Park. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council plans to vote in June on banning bottom trawls, bottom longlines and other destructive fishing gear across 23,000 square miles, an area thought to encompass the largest deepwater reef system in the world. Myra Brouwer, a biologist with the Fishery Management Council, informed that they want to protect these very fragile, vulnerable ecosystems that we know very little about. They grow very slowly, and they’re thousands of years old. More remote than the polar ice caps or the Himalayan peaks, the deep ocean has surrendered its secrets slowly. John Reed, senior scientist at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University, discovered many of the deepwater reefs off Florida riding the submersible Johnson-Sea-Link 2,500 feet below the surface, where no sunlight penetrates and the water temperature drops into the 30s. Despite encompassing a vast stretch of ocean floor, the plan is not particularly controversial. A small amount of commercial fishing takes place along the periphery of the reef systems, mostly for shrimp and golden crab. The new rule would allow the fishing to continue, although it would freeze the footprint of the golden crab fishery in place.
