Europe's biodiversity - biogeographical regions and seas: The North-east Atlantic Ocean - huge, deep and heavily exploited

Johnsen, Torbjørn, Nygaard, Kari and Olsgard, Frode (2003) Europe's biodiversity - biogeographical regions and seas: The North-east Atlantic Ocean - huge, deep and heavily exploited. Technical Report. European Environment Agency, Copenhagen, Denmark.

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Summary

This is the first report to describe the condition and influences on main habitat types and species groups in the eleven biogeographical regions and the seven seas around Europe. The report covers Europe from the Arctic to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains. It is based on expert contributions and comments from the countries involved in the biogeographical regions and seas. This chapter covers the North East Atlantic Ocean. A summary is as follows:

The North-east Atlantic Ocean is a part of the Atlantic Ocean and is dominated by deep ocean basins, except the Celtic Sea, the shelf along the Bay of Biscay and Iberian coast. - The formation of the North Atlantic deep water is one of the driving forces for the thermohaline circulation of the world’s oceans. - The primary productivity in the open ocean is low, but is increasing from south to north and towards shore. - The biodiversity is high, but several species in the area are endangered of which lack of sustainable fishery management is probably the most important threat. - Main actual and potential threats to marine habitats and biodiversity in the Northeast Atlantic are: 1 Lack of sustainable regulation of fisheries: Overfishing, bottom trawling, discards, catch of non targeted species 2 Pollution from maritime transport through oilspills and TBT in antifouling paints - There is a lack of information and/or monitoring on species, habitats and fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean except for coastal waters. - The North-east Atlantic Ocean is protected by the OSPAR convention and some other more global conventions. Nature protection is focussed on coastal areas and poor in all other parts of the ocean.

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