Marine Wildlife

Deep-Sea Bottom Trawling: Welfare and Ecosystem Impacts

Bottom trawling involves dragging weighted nets across the seafloor, killing enormous quantities of non-target species and destroying seafloor habitats that support millions of animals.

Key Facts

Bottom trawling is practiced in over 100 countries and affects more seabed than any other human activity
Bycatch in bottom trawls can exceed the target species by 10 to 1 in weight
Cold-water corals centuries old are destroyed in minutes by trawl gear
Seabed recovery from trawling may take decades in some ecosystems
MSC certification has historically included some trawl fisheries though standards are being strengthened

Welfare Considerations

The welfare impact of bottom trawling extends across millions of individual animals — fish, invertebrates, and other seafloor organisms — that are killed as bycatch, crushed by gear, or suffocate when their habitat is destroyed. The scale and indiscriminate nature of the mortality makes bottom trawling one of the highest-welfare-impact fishing methods in use.

What You Can Do

Choose seafood from fisheries not using bottom trawling
Support MSC reform to exclude deep-sea and sensitive area bottom trawling from certification
Advocate for legal protection of deep-sea habitats from bottom trawl access
Donate to organizations campaigning for bottom trawl bans in marine protected areas
Reduce seafood consumption to decrease overall demand pressure on ocean fish populations