Cold water coral reef discovered in submarine canyons on the
edge of the UK Continental Shelf.
Last month, a team of European scientists, led by the UK’s
Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) explored the deep
underwater canyons at the edge of the continental shelf, 320 km off
Lands End directly between the UK, Ireland and France. They
were hoping to find large areas of cold water coral reef, such as
those found further north off Ireland, Scotland and Norway. These
coral reefs are a rare habitat, easily damaged by seabed activities
like bottom trawling for fish, and in need of protection.
Starting at around 200m water depth, these canyons plummet to
the abyssal plain over 4,000m below, but almost nothing is known
about what lives there, on the seabed. The survey mapped the
shape, topography and geology of three canyons, which cover an area
of 850km2 (more than 120,000 football pitches), using a variety of
seabed mapping techniques and instruments. A high resolution
deep water camera was lowered by winch to capture video and still
images of the seabed at depths of up to 1,000m.
Scientists found that the canyons were made up of fine muddy
sands at their tops, on the edge of the continental shelf, the home
to delicate seapens, anemones, sea cucumbers, and patches of
featherstars. There was also evidence of former coral mounds
at the tops of the canyons, similar to those found on the edge of
the Irish continental shelf. Those coral mounds have been
proposed as Marine Protected Areas under the EU Habitats Directive,
and protecting them from fishing is currently under consideration
by the EU. The mounds found in UK waters during this survey
contained only broken coral rubble, where we would have expected to
find living coral.
Further down the canyons the seabed was made up of layers of
silty clay, with steep outcrops of white chalk at depths of around
900m. These rocky outcrops did support a few cold water
corals and other species, but not as much as could have been
expected. One small area of coral reef was found, with bright
orange cold water corals, anemones, starfish and featherstars, and
a few fish. Several discarded fishing nets, plastic
bags and boxes were also seen.
Charlotte Johnston, who leads JNCC’s effort in recommending
offshore areas for conservation to the UK Government said: “it was
fantastic to find out what is on the seabed in this area, and to
find cold water corals here in a different situation to those found
in other parts of UK and Irish waters, but also disappointing to
find this much evidence of damage, presumably by trawling, to
former coral mounds ”
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Notes to editors:
The collaborative survey between 4th and 18th June 2007, was
EU and Defra funded and undertaken as part of the JNCC led MESH
project (
http://www.searchmesh.net/)
directly involving three MESH partners: the UK’S Joint Nature
Conservation Committee and British Geological Survey and Ireland’s
Marine Institute, as well as the University of Plymouth.
The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) is the
statutory adviser to Government on UK and international nature
conservation. Its work contributes to maintaining and enriching
biological diversity, conserving geological features and sustaining
natural systems. JNCC delivers the UK and international
responsibilities of the four country nature conservation
agencies - Council for Nature Conservation and the
Countryside, the Countryside Council for Wales, Natural England and
Scottish Natural Heritage.
Images are available: please contact
+44 (0)1733
866839.