The closures will take effect in Howe Sound ahead of the spring season and apply to all commercial, recreational and Indigenous bottom contact fishing activities.

The Vancouver Aquarium recently received federal funding to study the reefs and have learned that warming waters caused by El Niño events cause the sponges to die.

Glass sponge reefs in British Columbia's Hecate Straight that were once considered extinct are now the focus of a federal protection effort that a conservation group calls too weak to save the fragile undersea treasures.