What is Destructive Trawling?
Destructive trawling and dredging nets used for commercial fishing have destroyed and continue to ravage entire seafloor environments, which are necessary to conserve, protect and restore healthy oceans and healthy fish populations.
The extensive use of bottom trawls and dredges for commercial fishing causes more direct and avoidable damage to the ocean floor - including deep sea coral and sponge communities and other unique and sensitive seafloor marine life - than any other human activity in the world.
Bottom trawls and dredges are so destructive because they effectively clear-cut everything living on the ocean floor. Trawls and dredges use large, heavy nets kept open by doors, weighing as much as several tons each, that drag across large areas of seafloor to catch fish that live on or near the ocean floor. Fishermen use trawls to catch species such as shrimp, cod, haddock, flounder, pollack and rockfish. Dredges are used to catch scallops, among other species.
The problem is growing worse because fishermen have developed rockhopper or roller gear - wheels ranging in size from six inches to several feet, the size found on earth-moving equipment -- that allow them to expand fishing operations beyond currently depleted fishing areas. Fishermen can now take this destructive fishing gear into new areas of complex rock and coral habitat, which are necessary to provide places of refuge for fish and other marine wildlife. 

Why Should We Care About Destruction to the Ocean Floor?

The seafloor is the ocean's foundation.The physical environment and the marine wildlife living on and near the ocean floor provides a foundation for the remainder of the ocean and is essential to the health of the ocean and all life within it. Scientists have discovered that the deep sea holds some of the most remarkable marine life we have ever known.

Not so long ago many scientists assumed the ocean floor was a vast plain, lifeless and without currents. In the 1960s, scientists using early submersibles discovered that the ocean bottom is made up of familiar landscape features including great plains, deep canyons, mountain ridges and seamounts.

Like land-based environments, life in the ocean is linked in ways that scientists are still coming to understand. Scientists are continuously learning about what happens to the rest of the ocean when one marine species is depleted or even disappears. We do know, however, that while many fish and marine mammals travel thousands of miles around the world in their lives, others are only located in very limited areas and cannot survive the loss of their one special habitat.

The point is that when destructive trawlers mow down the life and structure of the ocean floor, then many marine species, including some commercially valuable fish, are irreparably harmed.

 

 

NOAA

Bottom trawling destroys deep sea corals and sponges. 
Destructive bottom trawls and dredges are especially threatening to deep sea coral communities found in deep ocean canyons and areas that lie along the continental shelf. Fishing in those places with bottom trawling gear will destroy millions of pounds of deep sea coral and sponge that will take centuries to replace.

In the last few decades, scientists have discovered stunningly beautiful deep sea coral gardens and reefs, located off the coasts of the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, that exist and flourish hundreds and thousands of feet below the ocean's surface. We now know that two-thirds of all corals live in the deep sea. But we also know that, like shallow water corals, deep sea corals range widely in size, shape and color and are known for harboring a huge diversity of life.

Deep sea coral gardens and reefs serve as habitat for unique and diverse types of fish and other marine wildlife, including shellfish. The corals provide protection from currents and predators, nurseries for young fish and feeding, breeding and spawning areas for numerous fish and other ocean wildlife.

Disappearance of deep sea Coral influences fish distribution in the area. Rockfish, Atka mackerel, walleye pollock, Pacific cod, sablefish, flatfish, crabs and other economically important fish in the North Pacific inhabit coral and sponge areas. The Oculina Banks in the Atlantic also support large numbers of fish, including groupers, bass, jacks, snappers, porgies and sharks. Scientific studies support fishermen's observations that the disappearance of corals causes significant changes in the distribution of fish and other ocean wildlife.

NOAA

Deep Sea Corals and Other Seafloor Habitat Must be Protected from Destructive Fishing
To conserve, protect and restore the diversity and abundance of marine life off the U.S. coasts, we must, once and for all, stop this unnecessary blind destruction by bottom trawling fishing gear.  Keeping destructive trawling gear out of sensitive and essential habitat will prevent the permanent loss of necessary protection for deep sea coral environments and the myriad fish, sponges and other marine life that live in them.
 

Tory O'Connell ADFG