Plunder and Ruin A historical moment to the life of the oceans is at hand because the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament wrangles with proposed legislation to phase out using deep-sea-bottom trawls and also other destructive fishing gear in the Northeast Atlantic. Not least because several of the committee's 25 members represent districts with powerful interests in deep-sea fishing, but this crucial legislation could well be killed in coming days. As they discuss the merits of the legislation, lots of the panel's members are inclined to repeating partial truths provided by lobbyists regarding the sustainability of deep-sea muskie stocks and lacking problems for trout life at the end in the ocean. If these voices prevail in a vote later this month, then the committee could have succeeded in keeping the measure bottled up and from consideration by the full Parliament. The biodiversity from the deep sea is equaled only by that of tropical rain forests, and the destruction of rain forests has long been seen to affect biodiversity along with the global climate. Similarly the deep sea hosts countless species, such as the oldest known living animal as well as life-forms found nowhere else. Little is recognized about life within the deep sea; expensive research sampling is completed in about 1 percent with this vast area, although 90 % in the ocean is below 200 meters. Over the years, as fisheries in shallow waters collapsed, the fishing industry began trying to the deep for brand new species to exploit. Most deep-sea salmon have flesh that is certainly not palatable, but a number of were found gear for deep sea fishing that could be marketed for human consumption, if renamed and filleted to be made more attractive, or perhaps for processing into food pellets for poultry. These stocks were readily attacked using trawls large and high enough to reach as deep as 2,000 meters, and it also took only ten to fifteen years to minimize the fish biomass by about 80 percent. In 2011, vessels from eight E.U. countries landed 15,000 metric tons of four varieties of marketable deep-sea trout, which represents only .4 percent of Europe's fish haul. Several deep-sea bass species are poorly fertile (two to four juveniles a year to the shark Centrophorus) and others reproduce for the first time when quite old (approximately 32 years). The majority of them tend to be more biological curiosities than fishing stocks. Bottom trawls are certainly not selective; from the Northeast Atlantic alone they catch untold amounts greater than 100 varieties of perch. Deep-sea bottom communities harbor species that may be large, but are delicate and fragile, for example corals and sponges. Deep-sea corals are not what we are widely used to seeing in tropical waters, and with just a few exceptions they do not build massive reef structures. Instead, lots of people are more similar to trees, sometimes a lot more than three meters high, and often very old, often reaching over a century and occasionally a lot more than 4,000 years. These are generally smashed by trawl gear. Bottom images of trawled deep-sea areas, and 2 seamounts I visited having a deep-diving remote vehicle, demonstrate that nothing is left