Tasmanian Seamounts

The Tasmanian seamounts ( German: Tasmanian seamounts ), also known as Tasman seamounts and seamounts Tasmania, form a group of seamounts of submarine volcanoes, which lies off the southern tip of Tasmania. The cone- shaped extinct volcanoes are located in water depths from 1000 to 2000 meters and rise 200 to 500 meters above the seabed.

The seamounts are ecologically important and rich oceanic ecosystem that is under threat from overfishing. Therefore, since 1999 part of the submarine Tasmanian seamounts have been declared a Marine Protected Area.

Ecology

The Tasmanian Seamounts are an important feature of the southern Tasmanian oceanic environment. Although oceans generally contain nutrients, the presence of seamounts increases their growth. This effect is due to the topography of the mountains that sit up on the ocean floor, encouraged, since the cliffs cleared of sediment supply food for filter feeders. You sweep the rocks of the substrates and allow the settlement of sponges and corals. Among them are long-lived organisms on earth that reach an age of hundreds and possibly thousands of years. Especially the Tasmanian seamounts are colonized by corals Solenosmilia variabeles; provide sleeping places and habitats for benthic - Muschelnn, echinoderms, crustaceans such as stone crabs ( Parclamis sp.), squat lobsters ( Munidopsis treis ) and Trochidae and consolidate the ecology of seamounts. Although many of these species are also on the continental shelf, they have been found never so concentrated and rich in seamounts.

The seamounts were over long times an area of commercial fishing on the orange roughy ( Hoplostethus atlanticus ). 1994 mapped the Australian Geological Survey Organization, the Southern Tasmanian ocean region, including the Tasmanian seamounts, and shortly thereafter the Environment Australia (now the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities ). The organizations brought out a report which had the result is sensitive to the fauna of the Tasmanian Seamounts highly diverse, poorly understood and not at overfishing and recommended the establishment of an oceanic marine reserve. A 3-year fishing ban was imposed, which allowed to carry out a study of seamounts. 1977 242 various species of invertebrates have been identified, 26 % to 44 % of the species could not be identified and of those from whom it was assumed that they were unknown, a third was present only at these seamounts. The destruction caused by the fishing was also investigated and found that he has a strong impact on seamounts, because the trapping destroyed 46% of the coral species and reduced more than half of the net biomass.

Sanctuary

According to this study, a marine protected area, the Tasmanian Seamount community, also known as the Tasmanian Seamounts Marine Reserve, established under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The protected area prohibited to fish in an area of 370 km2. It contains a fifth of the 70 previously known Tasmanian seamounts, all relatively unprotected in areas of deep-sea fishing and.

In 2007, the reserve was incorporated into the newly created Huon Commonwealth Marine Reserve, which now comprises approximately 10,000 km2. In the same year a more detailed bathymetric survey of a 2200 km2 section 123 seamounts brought to light that were previously mostly unknown.

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