Jon Warrenchuck, a senior scientist and fisheries campaign manager with Oceana, hopes the photos and videos from the waters off Kodiak will help make the case to keep trawlers out of some areas of the ocean.
A group of researchers is hoping that data collected from the Gulf of Alaska’s sea floor will shed new light on the effects of bottom trawling.
“The Gulf of Alaska is a very special place and a very productive ecosystem,” Warrenchuck said. “Our timing of our survey here in the spring means we saw just an abundance of life, from the phytoplankton to the fish to the birds feeding at the surface.” The group surveyed 23 locations during the trip. Warrenchuck said they sent cameras and remotely operated vehicles down to depths more than a thousand feet deep at some sites, and photographed areas of the seafloor that had never been seen before.
Researchers documented coral gardens and groves of sea whips, but the group also saw evidence of heavy damage to the ocean floor, including areas of crushed coral where commercial trawling is permitted. Warrenchuck said they don’t know what those areas of the sea floor looked like before trawlers arrived.