Early this AM on BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3491501.stm
Monday, 16 February, 2004, 05:48 GMT
Deep-sea corals protection call
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff, in Seattle
<snip>
More than 1,100 marine scientists have signed a statement calling on the UN and world governments to stop the destruction of deep-sea corals.
The researchers want a moratorium on the use of the heavy trawling gear that gouges coral and sponges from the ocean bottom in search of valuable fish.
Some of the coral fields will contain thousands of species and are sometimes called the "rainforests of the deep".
"Bottom trawling is like fishing with bulldozers," said expert Elliot Norse.
"It's devastatingly efficient in one sense; it's a way to get fish relatively easily and painlessly, if you don't mind killing all of the life on the bottom to catch them," the president of the US Marine Conservation Biology Institute told the BBC.
The seafloor off Northwest Australia before (top) and after (bottom) the trawlers have passed through 
>
:'(
OmarD
(Trawlers did same to my own "home-waters" - "Hood Canal" out here in PNW a few years ago - a once diverse, life filled eco-system is now an oxygenless cesspool - bottom now looks same as lower one above) :'(
