Tag Archives: Wageningen Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies

Are there ecological merits to trawling the seabed?

Trawling the seabed for fish is an environmental disaster; it wrecks ecosystems, destroys fish stocks and leaves behind a marine desert. Right? Environment campaigners say so. But there is growing evidence that the effect is sometimes very different, with trawling increasing fish stocks from the North Sea to the California coast. A new modelling study may for the first time have demonstrated why. more@newscientist  06:44

Bottom trawling may be good for fish, study suggests

“What we found is that the indirect effects or side-effects of trawling — namely, the sort of selective removal of certain types of bottom life — sort of makes the system more productive in terms of food for the fish that fishermen target,” said Tobias Van Kooten, one of three authors of the report, along with Daniel van Denderen and Adriaan Rijnsdorp. more@cbcnews  06:54

Read To fish or not to fishBy Colin Ricketts