On Tuesday, January 20th, my group and I attended the Deep Sea Corals Amendment Webinar. This Webinar was held to decide whether or not The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council should pass the Deep Sea Corals Amendment, and what the details of it should be. We were some of the first people to “arrive” at the Webinar, and only Kiley Dancy, a Council Staff Member and Council Chairman Rick Robins were there.

The Deep Sea Corals Amendment would do three things. It would ban all destructive bottom fishing in the 15 canyons on the US Mid-Atlantic coast, ban the use of bottom fishing gear deeper than 200 meters below sea-level, and providing means of enforcement of this.

By the time the Webinar began, there was in the neighborhood of 30 people there. It started with Chairman Robins giving a short introduction and background of what was happening. He then gave the floor to Kiley Dancy, who then gave a presentation about the specifics of the Amendment, meaning what options we should use and what limitations we should set. She gave 8 options, with a few variations. Two of these options were Broad Coral Zones, which would limit all fishing is large areas, and Discrete Coral Zones, which would further limit all fishing in small. areas

After the presentation Chairman Robins left the floor open to comments, and if so to write “I would like to make a comment” in the chat box. His invitation was not left unanswered for long, and soon a person by the name of Pam Lyons Gromen wrote “I would like to make a comment” in the chat box. She started off by talking about how she supported the amendment and encouraged it’s passing. She went on to talk about how while she supported the amendment, she also wanted to make sure that none of the fishing industries were hurt by the amendment, so she supported only the specific zones, and at that only the minimum depth of 200 meters from the bottom.

After that Chairman Robins asked if anyone else wanted to make a comment, and right before he continue to end the Webinar, Daniela interjected that she wanted to make a comment. We strongly support the passing of the amendment, and so, three days before this, we had made a change.org petition about the amendment and how it would protect corals. It had gathered 317 by the date of the Webinar, and has 3,419 as of Monday, February 2nd. In her comment Daniela talked about the petition and that the number of signatures it had gathered showed that there was public support for the amendment to be passed.

After Daniela commented, Chairman Robins closed up the Webinar and we all logged off.

Later, on Wednesday, February 11th, we came back to the Deep Sea Corals Amendment. February 11th was when they were scheduled to have another webinar which was to be the penultimate decision. At the end of the 5 hour session, the decision was made to not make any decisions until the final meeting in June.