Bottom trawling is sickening!
- Thread starter Kinetic
- Start date
IronNoggin
Well-Known Member
Pacific Wild - Say no more...
Persistence & finding a naïve, friendly reporter helps with the campaign:
Industrial trawlers have scoured an area larger than Ireland off B.C. coast, group says | Globalnews.ca
Kevin Lester, a geographic information systems specialist who worked on the project, said the idea came about due to the decline of species off the B.C. coast.
globalnews.ca
trophywife
Crew Member
is this chinook by-catch thrown overboard or counted as quota? do the whales even care? lol
Will the whales eat dead chinook by-catch that’s thrown overboard?
trophywife
Crew Member
well it is definitely not a natural feeding pattern if they are.
2022/23 - https://waves-vagues.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/library-bibliotheque/41221618.pdf
2022/23 - https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/mpo-dfo/fs97-4/Fs97-4-3273-eng.pdf
2023/24 - https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/mpo-dfo/Fs97-4-3298-eng.pdf
www.pressreader.com
2022/23 - https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/mpo-dfo/fs97-4/Fs97-4-3273-eng.pdf
2023/24 - https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/mpo-dfo/Fs97-4-3298-eng.pdf
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British Columbia commercial rockfish harvester fined $25,312 for multiple violations - Canada.ca
On the Pacific Coast, the rockfish fishery is managed carefully to ensure the long-term sustainability of 37 species caught in British Columbia’s marine waters.
Signal 30 & David Attenborough
Ray Hilborn
Hello everyone,
Oceans with David Attenborough didn’t make the splash we thought it might, so we ended up not publishing the following. Unlike Seaspiracy or any of the other hyperbolic drivel that peak in popularity and flame out, Oceans will probably be a slower burn with staying power. It may not capture attention like Seaspiracy, but it has a much higher chance of influencing future students, PhD’s, and NGO employees.
Here’s what I ended up writing about it—feel free to republish it in your own publications, but we won’t be posting this on our website so as to not bring more attention to it.
This is not the first time we've written something only for our newsletter. If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up to be on our mailing list here.
All the best,
Ray Hilborn
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ocean with David Attenborough: The wrong problem and the wrong solution.
When I took driver training in the 1960s, we started by watching a movie called “Signal 30” which was half an hour of people killed and maimed in traffic accidents. It is available on youtube if you are interested. Many of my classmates came away sick to their stomachs from the carnage. There has been a similar audience response to the film, Ocean with David Attenborough. But the reason we were shown Signal 30 wasn’t to convince us to ban automobiles, or never learn to drive, but to understand that we need to be careful when driving and that very bad things can happen if you don’t manage your driving well.
Ocean with David Attenborough is similar. It shows horrific footage of trawling on sensitive habitats, bycatch being shoveled over the side of a boat, dolphins and turtles caught in nets, and sharks hanging on longlines. In other words, it shows the absolute worst aspects of poorly managed or unmanaged fishing. The message is that this is the norm, not that this is the worst. The message is not that we need to carefully manage fishing so these things don’t happen, but that fishing always has unacceptable environmental costs and at least 30% of the oceans needs to be closed to fishing.
I certainly agree that the ocean is under threat in many places, and action is needed. But the film suggests a single solution: no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). However, to prescribe a solution you have to accurately diagnose the threats. While the movie acknowledges concern about global warming on coral reefs, it ignores other aspects of climate change affecting the oceans—the largest threat of all. The film also ignores what is perhaps the biggest threat to kelp forests, sea grasses, salt marshes, and coastal ecosystems: land-based runoff of sediments, pollutants, and near-shore land use in general. MPAs do not reduce those threats at all.
Where overfishing and bycatch are a threat in some places, MPAs are a very poor solution, as they don’t reduce fishing pressure, but instead simply move it outside the MPA boundaries. The real successes in rebuilding fish stocks in the last 50 years have come from fisheries management measures that reduced fleet size, and catches. We have seen rebuilding of bluefin tuna around the world, Atlantic cod has rebuilt in many places, sockeye, pink and chum salmon are at record abundance in the North Pacific -- all due to good fisheries management and intact habitat with no contribution from MPAs.
Changes in fishing gear and practices have reduced bycatch of dolphins in tuna fisheries by 98%, and where these methods are applied seabird bycatch by 50-90% , and turtle bycatch by up to 98%. Closing 30% of the ocean would have little impact on bycatch as other areas would get fished harder.
Ocean with David Attenborough argues that bottom trawling should be banned, simply because poorly-managed bottom trawling has the potential to destroy benthic habitat and have high bycatch. But independent scientific evaluation by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Marine Stewardship Council have shown that well-managed bottom trawl fisheries meet high standards of environmental protection and are sustainable. Certainly, benthic impacts of bottom trawling need to be managed and minimized, but this is done well in many places like the U.S., New Zealand, Iceland, and many places in the E.U.
Finally, the film ends with an optimistic note that the oceans can recover and shows wonderful footage of rebounding whale populations. This recovery had nothing to do with MPAs! Instead, traditional fishery management techniques worked. If 30% of the oceans had been closed to whale hunting, the great whales would have simply been harpooned outside the MPAs and we’d likely have no whales today.
I agree with David Attenborough that the oceans need protection, but let us correctly diagnose the threats and prescribe effective solutions.
Ray Hilborn
July 2025
Ray Hilborn
Hello everyone,
Oceans with David Attenborough didn’t make the splash we thought it might, so we ended up not publishing the following. Unlike Seaspiracy or any of the other hyperbolic drivel that peak in popularity and flame out, Oceans will probably be a slower burn with staying power. It may not capture attention like Seaspiracy, but it has a much higher chance of influencing future students, PhD’s, and NGO employees.
Here’s what I ended up writing about it—feel free to republish it in your own publications, but we won’t be posting this on our website so as to not bring more attention to it.
This is not the first time we've written something only for our newsletter. If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up to be on our mailing list here.
All the best,
Ray Hilborn
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ocean with David Attenborough: The wrong problem and the wrong solution.
When I took driver training in the 1960s, we started by watching a movie called “Signal 30” which was half an hour of people killed and maimed in traffic accidents. It is available on youtube if you are interested. Many of my classmates came away sick to their stomachs from the carnage. There has been a similar audience response to the film, Ocean with David Attenborough. But the reason we were shown Signal 30 wasn’t to convince us to ban automobiles, or never learn to drive, but to understand that we need to be careful when driving and that very bad things can happen if you don’t manage your driving well.
Ocean with David Attenborough is similar. It shows horrific footage of trawling on sensitive habitats, bycatch being shoveled over the side of a boat, dolphins and turtles caught in nets, and sharks hanging on longlines. In other words, it shows the absolute worst aspects of poorly managed or unmanaged fishing. The message is that this is the norm, not that this is the worst. The message is not that we need to carefully manage fishing so these things don’t happen, but that fishing always has unacceptable environmental costs and at least 30% of the oceans needs to be closed to fishing.
I certainly agree that the ocean is under threat in many places, and action is needed. But the film suggests a single solution: no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). However, to prescribe a solution you have to accurately diagnose the threats. While the movie acknowledges concern about global warming on coral reefs, it ignores other aspects of climate change affecting the oceans—the largest threat of all. The film also ignores what is perhaps the biggest threat to kelp forests, sea grasses, salt marshes, and coastal ecosystems: land-based runoff of sediments, pollutants, and near-shore land use in general. MPAs do not reduce those threats at all.
Where overfishing and bycatch are a threat in some places, MPAs are a very poor solution, as they don’t reduce fishing pressure, but instead simply move it outside the MPA boundaries. The real successes in rebuilding fish stocks in the last 50 years have come from fisheries management measures that reduced fleet size, and catches. We have seen rebuilding of bluefin tuna around the world, Atlantic cod has rebuilt in many places, sockeye, pink and chum salmon are at record abundance in the North Pacific -- all due to good fisheries management and intact habitat with no contribution from MPAs.
Changes in fishing gear and practices have reduced bycatch of dolphins in tuna fisheries by 98%, and where these methods are applied seabird bycatch by 50-90% , and turtle bycatch by up to 98%. Closing 30% of the ocean would have little impact on bycatch as other areas would get fished harder.
Ocean with David Attenborough argues that bottom trawling should be banned, simply because poorly-managed bottom trawling has the potential to destroy benthic habitat and have high bycatch. But independent scientific evaluation by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Marine Stewardship Council have shown that well-managed bottom trawl fisheries meet high standards of environmental protection and are sustainable. Certainly, benthic impacts of bottom trawling need to be managed and minimized, but this is done well in many places like the U.S., New Zealand, Iceland, and many places in the E.U.
Finally, the film ends with an optimistic note that the oceans can recover and shows wonderful footage of rebounding whale populations. This recovery had nothing to do with MPAs! Instead, traditional fishery management techniques worked. If 30% of the oceans had been closed to whale hunting, the great whales would have simply been harpooned outside the MPAs and we’d likely have no whales today.
I agree with David Attenborough that the oceans need protection, but let us correctly diagnose the threats and prescribe effective solutions.
Ray Hilborn
July 2025
Policy for managing the impacts of fishing on sensitive benthic areas
Policy for managing the impacts of fishing on sensitive benthic areas
VIEWPOINT: Why the seafood industry cannot afford to ignore 'Ocean' documentary
David Attenborough’s feature-length documentary, Ocean, is reshaping how the public sees fishing. The seafood industry needs to step up, according to Emily De Sousa and Bri Dwyer, co-founders of the InnaSea Media marketing agency.
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