Bottom-trawling: A case of Future Injustice
What are the effects of bottom-trawling?
- Before: Intact Lophelia pertusa reef or mound with a redfish (Sebastes sp.) peering out
- After: Lophelia pertusa reef reduced to rubble from the impact of trawling. Images courtesy of Fisheries and Oceans Canada/Peches et Oceans Canada
Over the last decade, much evidence has come to light about the severe impact of bottom trawling worldwide. This includes China, the North Atlantic region, the Wadden Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the East and Western Pacific and the South Atlantic.
MoreIn 2006, 1,452 scientists from 69 countries expressed their profound concern “that human activities, particularly bottom trawling, are causing unprecedented damage to the deep-sea coral and sponge communities on continental plateaus and slopes, and on seamounts and mid-ocean ridges”.
In 2007, all respondent groups to a Canadian survey ranking fishing gear according to impacts, ranked the impacts associated with bottom-trawling as the most severe. Read more here.
Bottom-trawling damages the sea bed, kills unwanted fish and makes life worse for poor people.
Damaging the sea bed
Trawling has been estimated to be as damaging to the sea bed as all other fishing gear combined. Over 95% of damage and change to seamount ecosystems is caused by bottom fishing, according to a 2008 UNEP report. The damage exceeds over half of the sea bed area of many fishing grounds, and is worse in parts of the continental shelves, with particular damage to small-scale coastal fishing communities.
This is very serious for organisms that live on the bottom of the deep sea, which are extremely slow growing, and take a lot longer to recover compared to their shallow-water counterparts. Deep sea corals are especially vulnerable.
Killing unwanted fish
The same UNEP report states that fishing capacity is now estimated to be as much as 2.5 times that needed to harvest the sustainable yield from the world’s fisheries. And most likely, over one-third of the world catch is discarded due to inappropriate fish sizes, or simply due to unintended bycatch, particularly as a result of bottom trawling. For example, shrimp trawlers in the tropics can catch over 400 marine species in their nets.
By-catch is a serious conservation problem because valuable living resources are wasted, populations of endangered and rare species are threatened, stocks that are already heavily exploited are further impacted, and ecosystem changes in the overall structure of tropic webs and habitats may result. Read more here.
Recent research, defining ‘by-catch’ as catch that is unused or unregulated, estimates that bycatch represents over 40% of global marine catch.
Making life worse for poor people
UNEP has reported that large-scale, industrial bottom trawling of traditional fishing grounds ruins local fisheries with devastating effects on local fishermen, industry and livelihoods. Often this is illegal, unregulated and unreported. Sometimes, it is the result of fisheries agreements, such as those between the EU and African and other countries.
Under EU agreements with African countries, local, poor artisan fishers with smaller boats cannot compete with the highly subsidized, commercial fleets of countries like Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and Greece. Read more here.
Read more about setting up an early warning system against such crimes against future generations here.
