How bottom trawling damages marine ecosystems and causes welfare harm to benthic animals, and the campaigns restricting this destructive fishing method.
Bottom trawling causes welfare harm at two scales: individual animals directly injured or killed by trawl gear and the destruction of habitat that sustains entire marine communities. Individual animals trapped in trawls experience barotrauma from pressure changes, physical injury from gear contact, and the stress of capture before being discarded. The scale of bycatch is enormous — an estimated 38-40% of global catch is discarded. Simultaneously, the destruction of seabed habitat eliminates the complex environments that support benthic animal communities, causing widespread population-level welfare harm. Marine protected areas with strict trawling prohibitions produce rapid recovery of both habitat and animal populations.