"Shark Parks"? Oceans said in need of protection

OSLO, Mar 15 (Reuters) With tracts of the ocean as little known as Mars, discoveries of a stunning richness of life in the depths are spurring calls for more protection from trawlers, oil drillers and prospectors.

Only about 0.5 per cent of the oceans are in protected areas, compared to about 12 per cent of the earth's land surface set aside in parks for creatures ranging from lions in South Africa to polar bears in Alaska.

A United Nations meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Brazil from March 20-31 will review calls to extend protected areas into the high seas to help safeguard marine life ranging from seaweeds to sharks and from starfish to corals.

Scientists say the issue is pressing because life is being found in parts of the ocean long thought barren in the sediments of abyssal plains on the ocean floor, around subsea mountains, deep sea corals or hydrothermal vents.

''Great attention gets paid to rainforests because of the diversity of life there,'' said US oceanographer Sylvia Earle, an executive director of Conservation International. ''Diversity in the oceans is even greater.'' ''We should have at least as much of the oceans protected as of the land,'' she said. Most existing protected sea areas are close to coasts, such as around Australia's Great Barrier reef, Ecuador's Galapagos Islands or in the Mediterranean.

''We need better international cooperation and marine protected areas are one way forward,'' said Kristina Maria Gjerde, an expert at the Geneva-based World Conservation Union which groups governments and environmental groups.

CATCHING SQUIRRELS WITH A BULLDOZER ''Key areas for protection are deep sea coral reefs and seamounts which are being strip-mined by bottom trawl fishing,'' said Simon Cripps, director of the Global Marine Programme at the WWF environmental group.

Fishing fleets are trawling ever deeper international waters in search of new commercial species, like the orange roughy, as traditional stocks, such as cod or tuna, dwindle due to over-exploitation.

Unregulated fishing is by far the biggest threat to marine biodiversity because trawlers dragging nets over deep corals, for instance, may be destroying nurseries for fish.

Earle said deep-sea trawling was like trying to catch squirrels in a forest with a bulldozer.

New technologies are also opening up the ocean depths: Exxon Mobil Corp says it can drill for oil in waters approaching 3,000 metres deep. Deep water sponges have uses in fiber optics and heat-loving bacteria from thermal vents have promise in helping produce ethanol fuel.

Yet much of the ocean remains as mysterious as Mars.

''We still can't begin to say what's down there,'' said Ron O'Dor, chief scientist of the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year 1 billion dollars international effort to map life in the seas.

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