Azorean deep-water coral communities as perceived from bottom long-line fishery surveys [poster communication at ICES Deep Sea Symposium, 2009] (original) (raw)

Cold-water corals are among the most important deep-water communities for conservation. Because of its very low resilience and high levels of diversity, these communities are very sensitive and vulnerable to human activities mainly fisheries. Bottom-trawling is forbidden in the Azores, where only bottom long-lines are used. In 2007 and 2008 four demersal fishing surveys took place at the Azores region. These represented an opportunity to study the by-caught fauna from in islands slopes and offshore seamounts. Corals, sponges, hydrozoans and bryozoans form the bulk of the material sampled. A total of seventy-seven fishing sets were carried out between Corvo Island (39º39´N) and the Great Meteor complex (30º06´N) from 27 to 1990 m depth. Using two types of long-lines more than 50% of the fishing sets by-caught deep-water corals in an average of 0.98 corals/1000 hooks. The highest cpue´s of corals occurred at slopes of S. Jorge and Faial islands as well as the seamounts Mar da Prata an...