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What do you think of when you think of shipwrecks? Pirates? Lost treasure? Cute decorations for an aquarium? For sea animals, a shipwreck can also be a safe hiding place! When a ship sinks, ocean life quickly takes over. Animals like corals and anemones look for hard surfaces to cling to. Fish find places to hide. So could shipwrecks also protect animals from fishing nets?
Bottom-towed fishing pulls nets behind the boats. When those nets drag along the seafloor, they can damage habitat. Shipwrecks snag and damage nets, so fishing boats avoid them. We wondered whether shipwrecks act like miniature refuges for ocean animals. We studied five shipwrecks near the coast of Scotland and North East England. Some of these wrecks are in protected areas, and some are in places with a lot of fishing. We found that ocean life is more abundant near shipwrecks where there are lots of fishing boats!
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