British Columbia’s prehistoric glass sponge reefs are an international treasure. Found in Hecate Strait and the Southern Strait of Georgia, these fragile reefs provide vital habitat to a wide range of marine animals including endangered rockfish, but are very sensitive to disturbances.
They’re considered one of the great wonders in Canada’s oceans. B.C.’s giant glass sponge reefs in Hecate Strait, near Haida Gwaii, are headed for permanent protection. In June 2010, Canada declared these dinosaur-era reefs an “Area of Interest” for an Oceans Act marine protected area (MPA) – the final stage before their protection can be legally established. It’s great news for these prehistoric reefs, helping pave the way for certain World Heritage Status. However, the smaller glass sponge reefs, recently discovered close to communities on the Sunshine Coast, West Vancouver and Galiano Island, currently have no protection.
Although world oceans have plenty of individual glass sponges, B.C.’s Hecate Strait has the only sizeable reefs. Thought to have gone extinct, the modern-day discovery of these reefs in the late 1980s stunned the scientific community. In fact, they’ve been dubbed “Jurassic Park submerged”. Scientists calculate these large reefs date back 9000 years – they’re an incredible living history. But they’re not simply museum relics. These reefs continue to provide huge, safe habitats for all manner of rockfish and other creatures along the North Coast.
The sponges attach themselves to each other and nearby rocks, creating reefs eight stories high in some places. Although glass sponges look like plants, they are actually animals. In fact, sponges are the world’s oldest multi-cell organisms. They don’t have lungs or mouths. Instead, sponges pump water through their bodies to breathe, feed and remove waste.
There are more than 7,000 described species of sponges alive today in both fresh and marine waters and many more that remain to be described and named by scientists. Glass sponges make their skeletons out of silica (glass).
Their unique skeletal structure makes the glass sponge reefs extremely sensitive to sedimentation and to physical disturbances from bottom trawling activity. In fact, over half of the large reefs in Hecate Strait were destroyed by trawlers before fishing closures were put in place by the federal government in 2002. While these reefs are now headed for permanent protection in the form of an MPA, the government has not sufficiently addressed the impacts of sedimentation to the reefs. The smaller glass sponge reefs, found in the Georgia Basin closer to human populations, are vulnerable with no current level of protection.
Never miss your chance to make a difference! Enter your e-mail address here to get CPAWS news and actions delivered right to your inbox.