This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Tens of thousands of underwater mountains dot the ocean floor around the world. A few break the surface, such as the Hawaiian island chain.
The rest are seamounts, peaks and pinnacles rising from the deep seafloor. Some lie just a few meters below the surface, while others rest deeper. For many creatures, a seamount is an oasis in the vast open ocean.
Deep-ocean currents flow up their slopes, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water toward the surface. These undersea mountains are often home to colorful cold-water coral reefs and gardens of ancient sponges. Fish, turtles, sharks and whales use seamounts as breeding, feeding and migration sites.
But these biodiversity hotspots are at real risk. Their abundance of life has made them a magnet for the most destructive type of fishing—trawling. For decades, trawlers have targeted seamounts, towing heavy nets with weighted rollers across them.
This week, there's a chance this highly destructive practice could be phased out across seamounts found in international waters, where no nation has exclusive rights. The goal of bottom trawling is to scoop up commercially valuable species, such as orange roughy and toothfish. But each catch comes at a direct cost to everything else living on the seamount.
Trawlers drag enormous fishing nets for kilometers across the slopes and summits of seamounts. These nets can be 80 to 200 meters (260 to 660 feet) wide and are held open by heavy metal doors weighing up to 5 metric tons. Slow-growing deep-sea corals and sponges can live for centuries or even millennia.
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