Biologists warn the authorities about the accumulation of trash and fishing gears in the Avilés Canyon
The Galician team part of the coordinating committee for the Study of Marine Mammals (CEMMA) spent more than 40,000 hours in the submarine canyon of Avilés with two main objectives: to analyze its state of preservation and to study the whales and birds that live in the trench, one of the most extraordinary ecosystems in the Cantabrian Sea located 7 miles from the coast, where it is believed that inhabits the mythical “Kraken” or giant squid that made famous the novel by Jules Verne “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”.
The Cemma team did not find the sea monster, but they found numerous remains of garbage about eight miles away from the entrance of the estuary, where the canyon reaches depths of 4,000 meters.
Most of the wastes observed by investigators were milk packs, sprays and bottles. They also found fluorescent lamps and fishing gears. “We saw birds with plastic pieces in their beaks, a young gannet with a longline hook and two common terns and black foot tern landed on top of a fishing gear that was floating in the sea where they can get caught and die”, said Alfredo López, president of the Galician Coordinating Committee for the Study of Marine Mammals (CEMMA).
Alfredo López added that, “the conservation value of this area is enormous and it is necessary to prevent the destruction of the sea bottoms by unsustainable fishing practices in an area where there is no regulation or limitations.”
The main goal of the study of animals’ populations conducted last year in the Avilés canyon was to catalogue the species of cetaceans and seabirds to contribute with scientific results, to the proposal for the designation of this canyon as marine protected area under the category of underwater mountain.
The Cemma team watched nine cetaceans during the more than 503,000 miles long expedition. They observed species such as bottlenose dolphins, pilot whales, finback whales and other unidentified dolphins. They also found six ‘Portuguese Man o’ War’ jellyfish (Physalia physalis), eleven ocean sunfish and a shark.
The scientific expedition ended last 2nd of October. It was the third expedition after the two previous ones that the group performed in 2006 and 2007 to collect biological information from the Avilés canyon. The intention of the Galician organization is to repeat the study next year to confirm the distribution of species and study their seasonal variations.
The organization is also devoted to analyze the interaction between the productive sector and cetaceans to present proposals for the conservation of the species in the Avilés Canyon, which is a seismically active submerged trench that has earthquakes which just reach the level 3 in the Richter scale, making them virtually undetectable, according to various studies performed in the area.
The scientific studies conducted in the Avilés canyon are framed in the project “Life Indemares” which purpose is to contribute to the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity in the Spanish seas by identifying areas of value to the Natura 2000 network.
The actions programmed in the project will continue until December 2013. The project has a budget of 15.4 million Euros which is financed fifty percent by the European Commission.
The project counts with the support of the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, the National Research Council, Alnitak, Cemma, Oceana, the Society for the Study of Cetaceans in the Canary Islands, Seo / BirdLife and WWF Spain.
The Galician coordinating committee team who participated in the last campaign in the Avilés canyon was formed by eight marine biologists under the supervision of Angela Llavona Vallina, head of the maritime research campaigns in the coastal waters of Cemma.
They also counted with the participation of an ornithologist expert from the SEO, two acoustic experts who registered with sound equipments the presence of cetaceans, a specialist in audiovisual recordings and whale watching technicians.