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Bottom trawling and use of other mobile fishing gear have effects on the seabed that resemble forest clearcutting, a terrestrial disturbance recognized as a major threat to biological diversity and economic sustainability. Structures in marine benthic communities are generally much smaller than those in forests, but structural complexity is no less important to their biodiversity. Use of mobile fishing gear crushes, buries, and exposes marine animals and structures on and in the substratum, sharply reducing structural diversity. Its severity is roughly comparable to other natural and anthropogenic marine disturbances. It also alters biogeochemical cycles, perhaps even globally. Recovery after disturbance is often slow because recruitment is patchy and growth to maturity takes years, decades, or more for some structure‐forming species. Trawling and dredging are especially problematic where the return interval—the time from one dredging or trawling event to the next—is shorter than the time it takes for the ecosystem to recover; extensive areas can be trawled 100–700% per year or more. The effects of mobile fishing gear on biodiversity are most severe where natural disturbance is least prevalent, particularly on the outer continental shelf and slope, where storm‐wave damage is negligible and biological processes, including growth, tend to be slow. Recent advances in fishing technology (e.g., rockhopper gear, global positioning systems, fish finders) have all but eliminated what were de facto refuges from trawling. The frequency of trawling (in percentage of the continental shelf trawled per year) is orders of magnitude higher than other severe seabed disturbances, annually covering an area equivalent to perhaps half of the world’s continental shelf, or 150 times the land area that is clearcut yearly. Mobile fishing gear can have large and long‐lasting effects on benthic communities, including young stages of commercially important fishes, although some species benefit when structural complexity is reduced. These findings are crucial for implementation of “Essential Fish Habitat” provisions of the U.S. Magnuson‐Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act which aim to protect nursery and feeding habitat for commercial fishes. Using a precautionary approach to management, modifying fishing methods, and creating refuges free of mobile fishing gear are ways to reduce effects on biological diversity and commercial fish habitat. Perturbaciones del Lecho Marino por Artes de Pesca Móbiles: Una Comparación con la Tala Forestals Los arrastres de fondo y el uso de otras artes de pesca móviles tienen efectos en el lecho marino que se asemejan a la tala total de bosques, que es a su vez una pertubación terrestre reconocida como una de las mayores amenazas a la diversidad biológica y la sustentabilidad económica. Las estructuras en comunidades marinas bénticas son generalmente mucho más pequeñas que aquellas en los bosques, pero la complejidad estructural no es menos importante que la biodiversidad. El uso de artes de pesca m...

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Increases in the demand and price for industrial metals, combined with advances in technological capabilities have now made deep-sea mining more feasible and economically viable. In order to balance economic interests with the conservation of abyssal plain ecosystems, it is becoming increasingly important to develop a systematic approach to spatial management and zoning of the deep sea. Here, we describe an expert-driven systematic conservation planning process applied to inform science-based recommendations to the International Seabed Authority for a system of deep-sea marine protected areas (MPAs) to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem function in an abyssal Pacific region targeted for nodule mining (e.g. the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone, CCZ). Our use of geospatial analysis and expert opinion in forming the recommendations allowed us to stratify the proposed network by biophysical gradients, maximize the number of biologically unique seamounts within each subregion, and minimize socioeconomic impacts. The resulting proposal for an MPA network (nine replicate 400 Â 400 km MPAs) covers 24% (1 440 000 km 2 ) of the total CCZ planning region and serves as example of swift and pre-emptive conservation planning across an unprecedented area in the deep sea. As pressure from resource extraction increases in the future, the scientific guiding principles outlined in this research can serve as a basis for collaborative international approaches to ocean management.

Mora and colleagues show that ongoing greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have a considerable effect on several biogeochemical properties of the world's oceans, with potentially serious consequences for biodiversity and human welfare.

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The deep sea plays a critical role in global climate regulation through uptake and storage of heat and carbon dioxide. However, this regulating service causes warming, acidification and deoxygenation of deep waters, leading to decreased food availability at the seafloor. These changes and their projections are likely to affect productivity, biodiversity and distributions of deep‐sea fauna, thereby compromising key ecosystem services. Understanding how climate change can lead to shifts in deep‐sea species distributions is critically important in developing management measures. We used environmental niche modelling along with the best available species occurrence data and environmental parameters to model habitat suitability for key cold‐water coral and commercially important deep‐sea fish species under present‐day (1951–2000) environmental conditions and to project changes under severe, high emissions future (2081–2100) climate projections (RCP8.5 scenario) for the North Atlantic Ocean. Our models projected a decrease of 28%–100% in suitable habitat for cold‐water corals and a shift in suitable habitat for deep‐sea fishes of 2.0°–9.9° towards higher latitudes. The largest reductions in suitable habitat were projected for the scleractinian coral Lophelia pertusa and the octocoral Paragorgia arborea, with declines of at least 79% and 99% respectively. We projected the expansion of suitable habitat by 2100 only for the fishes Helicolenus dactylopterus and Sebastes mentella (20%–30%), mostly through northern latitudinal range expansion. Our results projected limited climate refugia locations in the North Atlantic by 2100 for scleractinian corals (30%–42% of present‐day suitable habitat), even smaller refugia locations for the octocorals Acanella arbuscula and Acanthogorgia armata (6%–14%), and almost no refugia for P. arborea. Our results emphasize the need to understand how anticipated climate change will affect the distribution of deep‐sea species including commercially important fishes and foundation species, and highlight the importance of identifying and preserving climate refugia for a range of area‐based planning and management tools.