The populations of Syringammina fragillissima that live in association with the deep-water coral Lophelia pertusa at 1000-m water depths in the Darwin Mounds region are threated by oil and gas exploration and fishing methods (bottom trawls) that damage both the corals and the benthic communities associated with them (Bett 2001). In 2004, a 1380 km2 swath of the seabed that includes the Darwin Mounds was designated a Marine Protected Area (MPA), and trawling within the confines of the MPA banned by the European Commission (De Santo and Jones 2007).Enforcement of the trawling ban is carried out by GPS-monitoring of fishing vessels, and supplemented by aerial surveys of the MPA. Few of the other known populations of S. fragillissima are protected from destructive fishing practices, or other human activities. A recently published study used species distribution models to predict the occurrence of suitable habitat for S. fragilissimma on the continental shelf off Ireland and the UK, and found that only 2.7% to 9.6% of S. fragillissima populations fall within the boundaries of current Marine Protected Areas, indicating that these populations live in “vulnerable marine ecosystems” (Ross and Howell 2013).
