Protection
It was requested in 1999 that groundfish trawlers voluntarily avoid sponge reefs. In 2002 voluntary closures of shrimp trawl fishing, and regulated closures of groundfish trawling were initiated in areas where sponge reefs were known. However, voluntary avoidance by fishers is not an entirely effective method, and new damage to the reefs was reported between 1999 and 2002, indicating that the reefs were not entirely missed.
Protection of the four sponge reefs in Queen Charlotte Sound and Hecate Strait is included as a “management issue” in the 2005/06 groundfish trawling management plan. Fishing activities around the sponge reefs are to be monitored to ensure that the reefs are being adequately protected from trawling.
It is recommended that an additional nine km buffer zone around the reefs be added to the existing groudfish trawl closures. The four reefs in the QCB, and one reef in the GB are also being considered as locations for future Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Although MPAs may be more effective than fishery closures for long-term protection of the reefs from bottom trawling, the oil and gas industry would still pose a threat.
Read more about this topic: Sponge Reef
Famous quotes containing the word protection:
“Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Without infringing on the liberty we so much boast, might we not ask our professional Mayor to call upon the smokers, have them register their names in each ward, and then appoint certain thoroughfares in the city for their use, that those who feel no need of this envelopment of curling vapor, to insure protection may be relieved from a nuisance as disgusting to the olfactories as it is prejudicial to the lungs.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)
“If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the laws’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)