Alaskan coral beds get new protection.

Huge tracts of delicate coral gardens and soft-coral forests off the coast of Alaska will be permanently protected from fishing gear that targets groundfish and shellfish by scraping the seafloor.

Most of the affected sites have never been disturbed by this gear. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on June 28 announced its new rule to preserve that situation, which will take effect July 28. The rules don't address nets or long-line fishing practices that don't disturb the sea bottom.

The largest area to be protected, off the Aleutian Islands, covers 279,000 square nautical miles, an expanse the size of Texas and Colorado combined. Some sites were chosen to protect rockfish habitats. Others protect dense thickets of red tree corals or the unusual communities that have developed around seamounts.

NOAA's new rule is "a big deal," says Elliott A. Norse, president of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue, Wash. Not only does it conserve "a colossal area," he says, but "more importantly, it establishes the principle that bottom trawling is a really severe threat to slow-growing seafloor ecosystems." Trawling particularly damages deep-sea corals and sponges, he says (SN: 10/26/96, p. 268; 8/7/04, p. 88). He notes the new rule also establishes that "we shouldn't let trawling expand into new areas." Indeed, he explains, "the pass of a trawl that does the most devastation to fragile seafloor ecosystems is not the hundredth or even the thousandth--it's the first."--J. R.