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SEAMOUNTS OF THE BALEARIC ISLANDS | 2010
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All international organisations involved in marine issues and biodiversity conservation
are developing strategies to protect seamounts worldwide because of
their ecological importance in maintaining global marine biodiversity and their
socio-economic importance for industries like high seas fisheries. Traditionally,
seamounts have always been areas of intense maritime traffic of large vessels,
including those dedicated to fishing and other important extractive industries like
mining.
Seamounts are seriously threatened marine ecosystems because they harbour
species with slow growth rates and late sexual maturity, making them highly vulnerable
to anthropogenic impacts. As such, more and more initiatives are been undertaken
to set up a global network of protected seamounts, as the only possible
way of guaranteeing their conservation and recovery.
Currently, only a few seamounts have been designated marine protected areas
(MPAs) with the goal of conserving the biodiversity they harbour. In 2008
for example, 2,350 km² around “El Cachucho” a seamount 36 nm off the coast of
Asturias, were declared as a MPA by the Spanish government once the importance
and complexity of the communities that live there was proven. Other examples
include the Tasmanian Seamounts Marine Reserve in Australia, protected
since 1999 and currently part of a much larger marine reserve; and Bowie seamount,
which makes up a unique habitat on the high seas because it rises from the seabed
at 3,100 meters and almost reaches the surface, 180 km off the western coast
of Canada.
Figure 4. Marine protected areas.