This is an afterimage (from LiveScience.com) of the affects of "bottom trawling" a.k.a. dragging giant steel nets across the ocean floor to catch fish. As that linked article to TreeHugger was saying, (or if you even follow that through to the BBC news article) New Zealand and some other South Pacific countries came to an agreement that they must research an area and be sure there is no "marine ecosystem at risk" before bottom trawling.
Well isn't that nice of them, picking which ecosystems are at risk and which aren't. If you ask me, its just one more UN agreement falling short of its original intent. And if you think the
fishers who livelihoods are made doing this are going to stop... well, you've got more faith than I do.
