Deep Sea Corals

We are looking at the distributions of deep-sea corals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in order to assess potential changes in the abundance of deep-sea corals over the past several decades, and to involve fish harvesters in research aimed at habitat evaluation and protection.

Our findings showed that DFO trawl survey data and fishermen's ecological knowledge on coral distributions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence identified similar distributions for soft corals and sea pens. Our research indicates that soft corals are found in shallow water throughout the Gulf and sea pens are concentrated in the deeper channels, especially the Esquiman, Anticosti, and Laurentian Channels. Fishermen's ecological knowledge identified a broader diversity of coral species in the Gulf than did the DFO trawl surveys, including large gorgonians and scleractinian cup corals. These observations suggest that the large gorgonians likely were not sampled by the DFO trawl surveys because they occurred on "untrawlable" bottoms. Several fishermen noted that they had observed higher catches of target species (shrimp, halibut) in sets that contained high bycatch of sea pens.

Some of the areas identified in interviews with fishermen have been highlighted for direct observation by drop-video camera or ROV.

A summary report on our findings will be available on the CURRA website in the near future.

Researchers and Partners

Materials

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