The three-part study - which included building a predictive map of carbon stocks across Canada’s continental margin - reinforces that the seabed is vital for both carbon storage and marine ecosystem health. Yet, it’s frequently overlooked in current marine protection planning.
With growing momentum around seabed carbon protection, this study underscores the urgent need for detailed mapping to inform marine planning and ensure collaborative, sustainable management of our ocean environment.
From EuroNews
Ocean experts found that the economic costs mostly come from carbon emissions caused by churning up the seabed.
Bottom trawling in European waters costs society up to €10.8 billion each year, according to a first-of-its-kind study released today.
It found that this cost is largely due to carbon dioxide emissions from disturbed sediments on the seafloor.
“We discovered recently that bottom trawling, by churning up the sediments on the seafloor, releases CO2 on the scale of global aviation and that half of those underwater emissions will end up in the atmosphere,” explains Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and one of the authors of this report.
Bottom trawling is a destructive fishing practice which involves dragging a net - some so large it could fit a Boeing 747 plane - across the seafloor to catch fish.
So, he says, for the first time they decided to calculate the costs and benefits of this fishing practice to both the industry and society at large.
What is the cost of bottom trawling in Europe’s waters?
The study is the first to measure the full economic cost of bottom trawling in European waters - including the EU, UK, Norway and Iceland.
It shows that this damaging fishing practice imposes somewhere between €330 million and €10.8 billion in annual costs to society.
The range of estimates in the study is so large because there is no globally agreed value on the cost of a tonne of carbon.
While bottom trawling does support jobs across the continent, bringing in both a source of food and revenue, the study’s authors say climate costs, environmental impacts and issues for small-scale fishermen outweigh these benefits.
Forbidding this fishing practice in marine protected areas (MPAs), they add, would benefit marine life, the climate and even the fishing industry.
Small-scale, sustainable fishers are seeing their livelihoods ripped away along with the reefs and seagrass meadows that are bulldozed by the weighted nets.
Hugo Tagholm
Executive director of Oceana UK
“Small-scale, sustainable fishers are seeing their livelihoods ripped away along with the reefs and seagrass meadows that are bulldozed by the weighted nets,” says Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK.
“And all this to line the pockets of a few. The truth is that thriving marine wildlife supports flourishing coastal communities.”
Bally Philp is the national coordinator for the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation which represents small-scale, inshore fishing vessels, line fishing vessels and hand-diving vessels.
“These are some of the most low-impact and highly selective fishing methods,” he explains.
Philp says that types of gear are often mutually exclusive.
If you were to restrict trawling in the area three miles from the Scottish coast alone, he adds, the country could double its number of fishermen and the amount of revenue generated by fisheries.
“We could do it without catching an extra fish.”
The study’s authors also point out that European taxpayers are funding the destruction of their own oceans.
European governments spend an estimated €1.3 billion on subsidies for bottom trawling every year, they say, a figure that is nearly equivalent to the value of the jobs the industry creates. Italy, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain and Sweden offer the highest amounts.
In some countries, researchers even found that bottom trawling wouldn’t be profitable for the companies doing it without these subsidies.
“Our analysis found that society always loses to industry when it comes to bottom trawling. Industry makes a profit only because it externalises its cost,” Sala says.
Citizens pay the cost of government subsidies which come from taxpayers’ hard-earned money.
Enric Sala
National Geographic Explorer in Residence and one of the authors of this report
In France, says director of NGO BLOOM Claire Nouvian, the government has been subsidising trawling for decades.
Research from BLOOM and French researchers from L’Institut Agro and the French Natural History Museum has found that around 800 French bottom trawling vessels destroy roughly 670,000 square kilometres of seabed each year - an area bigger than France itself.
Despite what Nouvian calls the country’s “love affair” with this destructive fishing practice, President Emmanuel Macron is convening the SOS Ocean summit at the end of March in Paris.
Ahead of these events, Macron announced €700 million for the fishing industry to modernise its fleets, strengthen food sovereignty and more.
“The trawling lobby was blasting with joy, they were so happy,” Nouvian claims.
Redirecting subsidies away from trawling could provide a pathway for financing a fair transition for the fishing industry, according to the report.
A fifth of EU bottom trawling happens in marine protected areas
The study comes as a coalition of civil society organisations calls for governments in Europe to ban bottom trawling in MPAs.
These areas are meant to be safe havens for marine life but around 13 per cent of Europe’s bottom trawling happens within their borders - a figure that rises to 20 per cent in the EU.
“The solution is obvious. Let's start by eliminating bottom trawling in marine protected areas and not relocating that effort elsewhere,” Sala says.
“That will work for marine life, the climate and society at large. It would also allow marine protected areas to fulfil their goal to protect marine life, and eventually help replenish nearby fishing grounds.”
EU member states are already supposed to be working to phase out bottom trawling in MPAs by 2030. So far, Greece and Sweden are the only countries to have announced bans or strong restrictions.
The bloc’s nature laws and international biodiversity commitments bind member states to rigorously protect these supposed safe havens for marine life.
“A proper interpretation of the Habitats Directive would mean that bottom trawling should already not be tolerated in EU Marine Protected Areas,” says John Condon, wildlife lawyer at ClientEarth.
“We heard from Commissioner Kadis (Costas Kadis, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans) this month that he is committed to the full enforcement of our nature laws - which we hope means we can expect bottom trawling to be conclusively phased out of EU MPAs designed to protect seabed ecosystems.”
But a recent analysis from marine NGOs Oceana, Seas At Risk and ClientEarth found that no EU country has comprehensive plans to phase out destructive fishing practices in MPAs by the end of the decade.
More than half failed to submit a roadmap.
As a result, the coalition of marine NGOs is taking governments to court in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden for infringing EU nature laws by failing to protect their MPAs against the impacts of bottom trawling.
Links :
- Ha-Shilt-sa : Study suggests seabed sediments should be considered for protection
- Euronews: NGOs and fishermen call for urgent action to end bottom trawling in marine protected areas / Greece becomes the first country in Europe to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas / Why is France protesting a UK ban on bottom trawling in protected areas?
- National Geographic : Study: Bottom Trawling in European Waters Costs Society up to €11 Billion Annually
- Greenpeace : What is bottom trawling and why is it bad for the environment?
- CleintEarth : What is bottom trawling? How it works and environmental impact
- Mongabay : Lawsuit is latest push to curb bottom trawling in protected European waters
- For The Ocean : why we need an urgent bottom trawling ban across all protected waters in the uk and eu
- Nature : Long-term carbon storage in shelf sea sediments reduced by intensive bottom trawling
- GeoGarage blog :
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