October 17, 2013 โ Miles off the Oregon Coast, sponges and corals believed to be hundreds of years old line the ocean floor. In August, Portlander Ben Enticknap led a weeklong expedition to capture images of such underappreciated sea life, to make a case for protecting it from bottomfish trawlers whose gear scrapes the ocean floor.
Using high-definition video from a remote-controlled submersible vehicle, the Oceana advocacy group captured footage where cameras had never been.
โWe saw areas that looked like they were already tilled up,โ with no signs of invertebrates one would expect, says Enticknap, guessing those were areas recently fished by trawlers. But other areas were rich with sponges, corals and bottomfish, he says. โAlmost every sponge that we saw had rockfish nestled inside of them and around them.โ
Now Enticknap and his colleagues will try to convince federal regulators the ancient sea life is โessential fish habitat,โ and worth preserving with new trawling limits. In tandem with the Ocean Conservancy and Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana will ask federal regulators next month to bar trawling in 12 new areas off Oregon, totaling 1,300 square miles offshore from Tillamook, Lincoln City, Newport and Yachats. Itโs part of a bigger proposal, and one of eight total, going before the Portland-based Pacific Fisheries Management Council, a federal agency that regulates fishing off the entire West Coast.
Still under study
The 14-member fisheries council meets Nov. 1 to 7 in Costa Mesa, Calif., where it could decide whether to launch a formal process to expand essential fish habitat off the West Coast.
Gway Kirchner, who represents Oregon on the fisheries council, says the state has a โvery open mindโ about the Oceana and other proposals.
Brad Pettinger, director of the Oregon Trawl Commission, leads a committee charged with reviewing the eight proposals and making a recommendation to the fisheries council. The former commercial fisherman is skeptical of new trawling restrictions.
โI could take you out and show you video of the bottom and you would have a very hard time saying it was bottom-trawled or not,โ Pettinger says.
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