January 2, 2020 — Along with the new year, the West Coast is getting new protections for corals and sponges that live on the seafloor.
Regulations starting Jan. 1 restrict bottom trawl fishing on about 90% of the seafloor off Oregon, Washington and California.
Bottom trawlers drag weighted nets along the seafloor to catch dozens of groundfish species, including lingcod, Dover and petrale sole and all kinds of rockfish. In the process, they can damage corals and sponges that live on the ground.
Ashley Blaco-Draeger with the environmental group Oceana said corals and sponges don’t recover easily from the damage because they grow very slowly.
“They only grow about a millimeter a year,” she said. “So once these structures are destroyed it can take hundreds or thousands of years for them to recover — if ever.”