fishery

A spokesperson for Canada's fisheries minister, Joanne Thompson, told AFP "Canada is open to considering other transfers or export permits," and new proposals "will be reviewed expeditiously."

These fisheries rely on purse-seine nets, a method that captures schooling fish by encircling them with a large wall of netting.

Even commercial fisheries could be affected; for instance, tuna populations migrate through the CCZ, meaning the impacts of mining could extend to seafood consumed around the world.

Although spionid worms do not consume their hosts directly, the damage they inflict on oyster shells still increases mortality rates in modern fisheries.

A Marineland letter to the fisheries ministry, obtained by the BBC, said that whatever happens to the animals would be "a direct consequence of the minister's decision".