MCS divers dive deep water coral reefs
A team of seven divers from the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) have just returned from Norway, diving the only deep water temperate coral reefs that occur within normal diving depths. Cold water coral reefs occur around the UK at depths or 200 metres or more but in Tondheimsfjord, uniquely, can be found as shallow as 40 metres.
The reefs are based on the branching colonial coral Lophelia pertusa, which is bright white because of the lack of microscopic plants that give tropical corals their colour. Many reef structures may be thousands of years old. In addition to the coral itself, the reefs support a rich population of sponges, sea fans, crabs, squat lobsters and tubeworms. They are also home to a number of fishes including the deep water Norway redfish and the rabbitfish or chimaera, relative of the sharks.
The MCS team felt privileged to be amongst only 200 or so divers in the world who have seen these cold water reefs, first-hand. The reefs in Trondheimsfjord are protected under Norwegian law “ in 1999 Norway became the first country to introduce laws to protect these deep sea coral reefs.
The UK protects part of the Darwin Mounds off north-west Scotland where a permanent ban on bottom trawling came�into force in August 2004 - the first area to have Europe-wide fishing restrictions imposed.
However, like so much of our marine wildlife heritage, these reefs are threatened almost everywhere else they occur by deep water trawling, oil and gas exploration, pipelines and cables. We have heard reports of tyres being dragged across the coral to break it up and make it easier to trawl.
In many ways these reefs are even more threatened than the tropical coral reefs we hear so much more about. They are equally delicate, grow much more slowly in these cold, dark waters and thousands of years of growth can be destroyed in hours without anybody being aware of it. The MCS team is proud to have been able to photograph and record the reef in Trondheimsfjord and hope it will remain as an example of the wealth of life that can be found in the deeper and darker waters of the North Atlantic.
For more information visit www.mcsuk.org
Page last modified: 6th Nov 2006 - 10:33:06