leafscale gulper shark Today the European Commission proposed
new catch limits for 2013 and 2014 that will allow fishermen to
exploit some little-known but important deep-sea fishes against
the advice of scientists. As this video of the European deep-sea
prepared by our European office demonstrates, even though light
doesn’t penetrate to the ocean bottom, it's still thriving with
life. It's a strange world and the animals themselves often have
fittingly strange names, like the Mediterranean slimehead,
greater forkbeard, and conger, to name a few. Some species, like
the roundnose grenadier, blue ling and red seabream, need
special protection. Executive Director of Oceana Europe, Xavier
Pastor explains why: “Due to their biological characteristics,
like low reproduction, slow growth rate and late maturity, deep
sea species are highly vulnerable to overexploitation. Their
management must, now more than ever, follow the precautionary
approach.” European fishermen have increasingly turned to
scouring the deep-sea