Irish deep-sea "treasure" could be in danger, according to a Galway scientist who has called for a management strategy to protect it. Dr Anthony Grehan, of NUI Galway's Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute, says the "treasure", recently-discovered coral reefs, could be quickly destroyed if adequate protection measures are not arranged.
He identifies the main threat as commercial fishing, principally by foreign vessels in Irish waters. However, he also says exploitation of mineral reserves could also cause damage.
It is a problem which has arisen elsewhere. Several mining codes are being developed under the UN Law of the Sea Convention in response to requests from the Russian Federation. Fishing methods, mainly trawling, are also being curtailed to protect coral off Norway.
The coral reefs identified in the Porcupine Seabight and Rockall Trough are spectacular, according to Dr Grehan, and rival their tropical cousins in terms of biodiversity. He says they also appear to support a rich fish life. Whereas tropical coral, such as that found in the Pacific and Caribbean, requires light, the Atlantic coral grows in dark and cold depths.
Scientists are keen to know more about their origin and their association with much deeper deposits of hydrocarbon. Deep-sea fishermen are well aware of their presence and have often lost gear on the large carbonate mounds or underwater hills some 300 metres high on which the coral thrives.
More than half of the world's deep-sea coral reefs have been destroyed already, with a detrimental effect on fish, according to scientists who attended the first international symposium on the subject this month in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Most environmental legislation now extends only to the 12-mile limit or inshore zones, and to sandbanks and reefs farther out. However, protection of sensitive offshore areas could qualify.
The EU Habitats Directive and the OSPAR Convention for the north-east Atlantic would be the two most applicable pieces of international legislation, Ms Sabine Christiansen, of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), told a workshop recently hosted by Dr Grehan in NUI Galway.
The workshop was held as part of the Atlantic Coral Ecosystem Study (ACES), an EU-funded initiative to assess the vulnerability and sensitivity of corals to economic exploitation.
The habitats directive is currently being applied onshore in designating Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), but there is a growing lobby for designation of Marine Protection Areas (MPAs).
Last year Greenpeace successfully brought an action against the British government to force it to protect marine environments outside the 12-mile limit under the EU Habitats Directive. This could have implications for all EU states and Ireland's translation of the directive into national law already appears to provide for MPAs to the end of the 200-mile fishery zone, Dr Liz Sides, of Duchas, the Heritage Service, told the workshop.
Dr Grehan has called on Duchas and the Office of Public Works to clarify the situation. He says additional resources will be needed to select candidate sites for MPAs. He says Irish fishermen can be active participants, such as Galway skipper Mr Paddy O'Malley, owner of the Capall Ban, who attended the workshop.
Dr Grehan intends to produce an atlas of Irish coral and hopes to draw heavily on the experience of fishermen. This will be published on the Web and will help skippers to avoid areas where they risk significant damage to gear.
There is another dimension to applying protective legislation offshore. The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group is concerned about the effect of mineral exploration and possible exploitation on whales and dolphins, and recently produced a scoping document in relation to the Enterprise Oil Corrib gas field off north Co Mayo.
Given that two whaling stations operated on the Mayo coast between 1908 and 1923, cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) are still believed to be in abundance in the area. During the 15 years when the stations were open, some 894 killings of whales were recorded within a 95 to 120-kilometre radius. Most of the kills were fin whales, but blue, sei and sperm whales and a few humpback and right whales were also killed.
Dr Simon Berrow, of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, says of the 23 cetacean species identified in Irish waters, at least 17 have been found off the north-west coast of Mayo.
Some of these, the blue, right and humpback in particular, have suffered from overexploitation elsewhere and populations are only recovering. Irish waters have been declared a whale and dolphin sanctuary since 1991.
He believes that there is great potential for disturbance by construction vessels and/or seabed structures, and noise from seismic activity. While some species are far more so than others, all cetaceans are extremely sensitive to sound.
His scoping document says the presence of a pipeline on the seabed might interfere with the hydrography of the area and the habitat, while harbour porpoises would also be affected by construction onshore.
The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group believes that an environmental impact assessment of work on the gas field should assess the long-term impact on cetaceans, and continuous monitoring will be required throughout the field's life.
