Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment
Deep-sea sponge grounds are vulnerable marine ecosystems, which through their benthic-pelagic coupling of nutrients, are of functional relevance to the deep-sea realm. The impact of fishing bycatch is here evaluated for the first time at a bathyal, sponge-dominated ecosystem in the high seas managed...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6825172 2023-05-15T17:45:39+02:00 Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment Pham, C. K. Murillo, F. J. Lirette, C. Maldonado, M. Colaço, A. Ottaviani, D. Kenchington, E. 2019-11-01 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6825172/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31676767 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52250-1 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6825172/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31676767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52250-1 © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52250-1 2019-11-17T01:22:18Z Deep-sea sponge grounds are vulnerable marine ecosystems, which through their benthic-pelagic coupling of nutrients, are of functional relevance to the deep-sea realm. The impact of fishing bycatch is here evaluated for the first time at a bathyal, sponge-dominated ecosystem in the high seas managed by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. Sponge biomass surfaces created from research survey data using both random forest modeling and a gridded surface revealed 231,140 t of sponges in the area. About 65% of that biomass was protected by current fisheries closures. However, projections of trawling tracks estimated that the sponge biomass within them would be wiped out in just 1 year by the current level of fishing activity if directed on the sponges. Because these sponges filter 56,143 ± 15,047 million litres of seawater daily, consume 63.11 ± 11.83 t of organic carbon through respiration, and affect the turnover of several nitrogen nutrients, their removal would likely affect the delicate ecological equilibrium of the deep-sea benthic ecosystem. We estimated that, on Flemish Cap, the economic value associated with seawater filtration by the sponges is nearly double the market value of the fish catch. Hence, fishery closures are essential to reach sponge conservation goals as economic drivers cannot be relied upon. Text Northwest Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Scientific Reports 9 1 |
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Article Pham, C. K. Murillo, F. J. Lirette, C. Maldonado, M. Colaço, A. Ottaviani, D. Kenchington, E. Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
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Deep-sea sponge grounds are vulnerable marine ecosystems, which through their benthic-pelagic coupling of nutrients, are of functional relevance to the deep-sea realm. The impact of fishing bycatch is here evaluated for the first time at a bathyal, sponge-dominated ecosystem in the high seas managed by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. Sponge biomass surfaces created from research survey data using both random forest modeling and a gridded surface revealed 231,140 t of sponges in the area. About 65% of that biomass was protected by current fisheries closures. However, projections of trawling tracks estimated that the sponge biomass within them would be wiped out in just 1 year by the current level of fishing activity if directed on the sponges. Because these sponges filter 56,143 ± 15,047 million litres of seawater daily, consume 63.11 ± 11.83 t of organic carbon through respiration, and affect the turnover of several nitrogen nutrients, their removal would likely affect the delicate ecological equilibrium of the deep-sea benthic ecosystem. We estimated that, on Flemish Cap, the economic value associated with seawater filtration by the sponges is nearly double the market value of the fish catch. Hence, fishery closures are essential to reach sponge conservation goals as economic drivers cannot be relied upon. |
format |
Text |
author |
Pham, C. K. Murillo, F. J. Lirette, C. Maldonado, M. Colaço, A. Ottaviani, D. Kenchington, E. |
author_facet |
Pham, C. K. Murillo, F. J. Lirette, C. Maldonado, M. Colaço, A. Ottaviani, D. Kenchington, E. |
author_sort |
Pham, C. K. |
title |
Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
title_short |
Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
title_full |
Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
title_fullStr |
Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
title_full_unstemmed |
Removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the Flemish Cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
title_sort |
removal of deep-sea sponges by bottom trawling in the flemish cap area: conservation, ecology and economic assessment |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6825172/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31676767 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52250-1 |
genre |
Northwest Atlantic |
genre_facet |
Northwest Atlantic |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6825172/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31676767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52250-1 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-52250-1 |
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Scientific Reports |
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9 |
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1 |
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