Sir David Attenborough’s 90th birthday brought the release of his latest film Ocean. It contained the first-ever footage of bottom trawling, which quickly went viral.
As the film’s audience looks to marine conservationists for answers about what can be done, we look back on the achievements of our Ocean Programme partners opposing harmful fishing practices.
From protecting vast areas of the seabed from trawling to complex fisheries reform, change is possible, and as the Ocean film attests, marine ecosystems have a remarkable talent for recovery.
Content warning: The footage of bottom trawling from the film ‘Ocean’ depicts distressing destruction of marine life.
“… Often on the hunt for just a single species.
Almost everything else is discarded.
Over three quarters of a trawler’s catch may be thrown away.”
Sir David Attenborough, Ocean
The harrowing footage from Sir David Attenborough’s latest film Ocean shows bottom trawling as it has never been seen before – the distress, the discards, and the destruction.
This devastating form of fishing needs to end.
There is hope – marine conservationists have already had historic successes to protect our ocean life against unsustainable fishing practices.
Successes from our Ocean Programme partners
Our partner, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC) campaigned for years for the North Atlantic Fisheries Organisation to respect the United Nations Resolutions on deep-sea fishing, which led to the closure of all seamounts (underwater mountains) in this fishing area to bottom trawling in 2023.
Before that, in 2022, the EU protected 16,000 km2 of vulnerable deep-sea areas in European waters following a decade of advocacy by our Ocean Programme partners DSCC and BLOOM Association.
Because trawling is largely unmonitored, there is a huge lack of research around the levels of ecosystem damage and bycatch, but another achievement from our Ocean Programme partners was the publication of a critical report last year analysing trawl fisheries in China, Thailand, and Vietnam. As the first comprehensive overview of trawl fisheries in Southeast and East Asia, the report laid the groundwork for reforms in fisheries management in the region and offered a vital case study of hope that harmful fisheries can be reformed.
Our Ocean Programme partners have been conducting research into the impact of trawl fisheries and advocating for better fishing practices for our ocean life. Image © iStock
Trawling fishery reform in Thailand
In the 1960s, Thailand’s fishing fleet rapidly expanded from small-scale and inshore fisheries when international aid and advice led to the development of a rapidly growing offshore trawling fleet with minimum controls (though much more regulated monitoring than nearby nations).
However, Thailand undertook a mission to restructure its fishing fleet by significantly reducing the number of trawl vessels (particularly focusing on illegal ones), shifting away from multispecies fisheries and towards several single species, and increasing trawl mesh size which saves more juveniles and small fish species.
Although complex and still ongoing, the story of Thailand’s progress on fisheries reform shows that coordinated action on several different fronts can make fishing more sustainable and let the marine ecosystems recover. Now, the number of trawl vessels is at a level not seen since the late 1960s and research suggests that fish levels are increasing once more.
Trawling nets with small holes capture a vast array of species as bycatch. Image: Alex Proimos CC BY-NC 2.0
What’s next
Even though marine conservation is deeply complex, one thing our Ocean Programme partners do not struggle with is ambition.
DSCC have set their sights on removing bottom trawling from seamounts completely, protecting these vulnerable marine systems through policy and following up to ensure these restrictions are enforced.
BLOOM has orchestrated a European citizen coalition for the protection of the ocean which has brought together dozens of NGOs, activists, artists, policymakers and scientists to demand that European institutions meet their responsibility to protect our ocean with a mandate that has 15 points – the first of which is to ‘Disarm the bulldozers of the ocean by 2030’, in reference to de-trawling the EU fishing fleet.
BLOOM also focus on fisheries subsidies – when industrial fishing is not financially sustainable it can be subsidised by governments, going against environmental recommendations for damaging practices like bottom trawling.
Protecting marine life from harmful fishing practices is a key goal under the Research and Policy strand of Synchronicity Earth’s Ocean Programme, which focuses on conservation in the distant reaches of the deep ocean and international waters.
