Bottom trawling involves dragging large nets loaded with heavy weights along the sea floor, bulldozing everything in their path and indiscriminately catching all marine life, wanted or not (see Marine Conservation Biology Institute “Destructive fishing page” for a brief description of bottom trawling and additional resources, link below).

“A number of surveys have shown bottom trawl fishing to be highly destructive to the biodiversity associated with seamounts and deep-sea coral ecosystems and concluded that it is likely to pose significant risks to this biodiversity, including the risk of species extinction.” Quoted from the report: “High Seas Bottom Trawl Fisheries and their Impacts on the Biodiversity of Vulnerable Deep-Sea Ecosystems: Options for International Action ”, see WWF link below. This report provides detailed information about bottom trawling including status, locations, catch, ecosystem impacts and more.

For an example of bycatch leading species to extinction, see Daily Telegraph: “Blobfish: world's most 'miserable looking' marine animal facing exinction ”, 26 Jan 2010, link below.

For a survey of the impact of bottom trawling on the sea floor, see Terra Daily: “Human Impacts On The Deep Seafloor” 16 Sep 2010, link below.

For information about recognition of the scale of the issue and the need for action at government level, see NZ Department of Conservation, “Bottom trawling strategy” page, link below.

Environmental defense organizations have campaigns on this issue (for example see Greenpeace “Bottom trawling” page, link below).