By Canadian Press

New protected ocean areas aimed at conserving coral, sea bottom dwellers

Dec 21, 2017 | 1:45 PM

OTTAWA — The Disko Fan and the Funk Island Deep. Most Canadians might be excused for thinking they could be the names of pop-rock bands.

They are, in fact, the monikers of two of Canada’s newest marine refuges where the federal government hopes to protect sensitive ocean habitats in the Eastern Arctic.

Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced the creation of seven new marine refuges Thursday, adding more than 145,000 square kilometres to the ocean areas along Canada’s coasts that are deemed off limits to fishing gear that makes contact with the ocean floor.

“As Canadians, we are fortunate to be bounded by three oceans, which are significant to our heritage, culture and economy,” LeBlanc said in a statement.

“But this fortune brings with it the responsibility to protect our precious marine resources.”

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The new refuges include an area of the Davis Strait off the coast of Nunavut where there are large concentrations of corals, sea pens and sponges that are easily destroyed by fishing gear designed to scour the seafloor.

The Disko Fan, off the Nunavut coast, was designated, in part, to help protect food sources relied on for winter survival of the threatened Narwhal toothed whale.

Another area, the Hatton Basin, touches the waters off both Nunavut and Newfoundland and Labrador, where the Funk Island Deep, the Hopedale Saddle, the Hawke Channel and the Northeast Newfoundland Slope are also now deemed protected.

The coral are so large in the Hatton Basin that fishers haven’t dared to enter the area in recent years over fears that they will destroy their fishing equipment, said Trevor Taylor, vice president of conservation for the Oceans North Arctic organization, which has been negotiating with the government for years to establish the refuge boundaries.

But the basin’s edges, where coral beds were wiped out over time, provide for some of the most lucrative fishing in Canada, worth tens of millions of dollars, said Taylor.

“Probably, outside of lobster in southwestern Nova Scotia, (Hatton Basin) is the most valuable piece of fishing real estate in the entire country,” he said.

“The northern shrimp fishery harvests its most valuable component of the catch in that area.”

By closing off the area to all bottom-contact fishing activities, the hope is that fishing companies won’t destroy any more of the coral in a bid to expand lucrative fishing grounds, said Taylor.

In the Hawke Channel and Funk Island Deep refuges, which provide seafloor habitat important to Atlantic cod, bottom trawl, gillnet and longline fishing activities will also be prohibited.

The new refuge designations will protect 7.75 per cent of Canada’s overall marine and coastal areas, said LeBlanc.

The government has committed to increasing the proportion of protected marine areas to 10 per cent by 2020.

Terry Pedwell, The Canadian Press