Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Florida State University, 117 N. Woodward Ave., Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.
Department of Geography, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-3147, USA.
Sci Adv. 2019 Aug 7;5(8):eaaw4513. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw4513. eCollection 2019 Aug.
Although the expectation of lack of resilience of seamount vulnerable marine ecosystems has become a paradigm in seamount ecology and a tenet of fisheries management, recovery has not been tested on time scales >10 years. The Northwestern Hawaiian Ridge and Emperor Seamounts have experienced the highest documented fish and invertebrate seamount fisheries takes in the world. Surveys show that, despite visible evidence of substantial historic fishing pressure, a subset of these seamounts that have been protected for >30 years showed multiple signs of recovery including corals regrowing from fragments and higher abundances of benthic megafauna than Still Trawled sites. Contrary to expectations, these results show that, with long-term protection, some recovery of seamount deep-sea coral communities may be possible on 30- to 40-year time scales. The current practice of allowing continued bottom-contact fishing at heavy trawled sites may cause damage to remnant populations, which likely play a critical role in recovery.
尽管人们普遍认为海山脆弱海洋生态系统缺乏恢复力，但这一观点已成为海山生态学的一个范例，也是渔业管理的一个原则，然而在超过 10 年的时间尺度上，尚未对恢复力进行测试。西北夏威夷海岭和皇帝海山是世界上鱼类和无脊椎动物海山捕捞量最高的地区。调查显示，尽管有大量历史捕捞压力的明显证据，但在已受保护超过 30 年的部分海山中，出现了多种恢复迹象，包括珊瑚从碎片中重新生长，以及底栖大型动物的丰度高于仍在拖网捕捞的地点。与预期相反，这些结果表明，在长期保护下，一些海山深海珊瑚群落可能在 30 到 40 年内恢复。目前允许在重拖网捕捞地点继续进行底部接触捕捞的做法可能会对残余种群造成损害，而残余种群可能在恢复中发挥关键作用。
