Economic cost of bottom trawling outweighs benefits, study finds

Bottom trawling in European waters costs society up to €10.8 billion each year, according to a first-of-its-kind study released today.

It found that this cost is largely due to carbon dioxide emissions from disturbed sediments on the seafloor.

“We discovered recently that bottom trawling, by churning up the sediments on the seafloor, releases CO2 on the scale of global aviation and that half of those underwater emissions will end up in the atmosphere,” explains Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer in Residence and one of the authors of this report.

Bottom trawling is a destructive fishing practice which involves dragging a net – some so large it could fit a Boeing 747 plane – across the seafloor to catch fish. It disturbs sediment, destroys marine habitats and far more than just the target species gets caught in these nets.

“The fishing lobby argues for the benefits that bottom trawling provides for society, jobs, economic revenue and food,” Sala adds, “but they never mention the costs.”

So, he says, for the first time they decided to calculate the costs and benefits of this fishing practice to both the industry and society at large. The result? The costs of bottom trawling far exceed the benefits.

What is the cost of bottom trawling in Europe’s waters?

The study is the first to measure the full economic cost of bottom trawling in European waters – including the EU, UK, Norway and Iceland.

It shows that this damaging fishing practice imposes somewhere between €330 million and €10.8 billion in annual costs to society.

The range of estimates in the study is so large because there is no globally agreed value on the cost of a tonne of carbon. But even at the lower end of the estimate, Sala says “society still loses”.

While bottom trawling does support jobs across the continent, bringing in both a source of food and revenue, the study’s authors say climate costs, environmental impacts and issues for small-scale fishermen outweigh these benefits.

Forbidding this fishing practice in marine protected areas (MPAs), they add, would benefit marine life, the climate and even the fishing industry. Many fishermen are already on board with the fight for tougher restrictions.

“Small-scale, sustainable fishers are seeing their livelihoods ripped away along with the reefs and seagrass meadows that are bulldozed by the weighted nets,” says Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK.

“And all this to line the pockets of a few. The truth is that thriving marine wildlife supports flourishing coastal communities.”

Bally Philp is the national coordinator for the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation which represents small-scale, inshore fishing vessels, line fishing vessels and hand-diving vessels.

“These are some of the most low-impact and highly selective fishing methods,” he explains. “They actually already employ the majority of fishermen.”

Philp says that types of gear are often mutually exclusive. Allowing bottom trawling in areas means other forms of fishing, like hand diving for scallops or putting pots on the seabed, can’t take place.

If you were to restrict trawling in the area three miles from the Scottish coast alone, he adds, the country could double its number of fishermen and the amount of revenue generated by fisheries.

“We could do it without catching an extra fish.”

‘Citizens pay the cost of government subsidies’

The study’s authors also point out that European taxpayers are funding the destruction of their own oceans.

European governments spend an estimated €1.3 billion on subsidies for bottom trawling every year, they say, a figure that is nearly equivalent to the value of the jobs the industry creates. Italy, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain and Sweden offer the highest amounts.

In some countries, researchers even found that bottom trawling wouldn’t be profitable for the companies doing it without these subsidies.

“Our analysis found that society always loses to industry when it comes to bottom trawling. Industry makes a profit only because it externalises its cost,” Sala says.

“Citizens pay the cost of government subsidies which come from taxpayers’ hard-earned money.”

In France, says director of NGO BLOOM Claire Nouvian, the government has been subsidising trawling for decades.

“The transition away from trawling could have happened and should have happened,” she argues, “and it would have cost nothing because we could have organised it, but we didn’t.”

Research from BLOOM and French researchers from L’Institut Agro and the French Natural History Museum has found that around 800 French bottom trawling vessels destroy roughly 670,000 square kilometres of seabed each year – an area bigger than France itself.

Despite what Nouvian calls the country’s “love affair” with this destructive fishing practice, President Emmanuel Macron is convening the SOS Ocean summit at the end of March in Paris. It will together global thought leaders, policymakers, scientists, and ocean advocates to create a roadmap to the UN Oceans conference being held in Nice in June this year.

Ahead of these events, Macron announced €700 million for the fishing industry to modernise its fleets, strengthen food sovereignty and more.

“The trawling lobby was blasting with joy, they were so happy,” Nouvian claims. “They were jumping around because they could not believe that money was coming from the offshore wind tax going straight into their pockets.”

Redirecting subsidies away from trawling could provide a pathway for financing a fair transition for the fishing industry, according to the report.

A fifth of EU bottom trawling happens in marine protected areas

The study comes as a coalition of civil society organisations calls for governments in Europe to ban bottom trawling in MPAs.

These areas are meant to be safe havens for marine life but around 13 per cent of Europe’s bottom trawling happens within their borders – a figure that rises to 20 per cent in the EU.

“The solution is obvious. Let’s start by eliminating bottom trawling in marine protected areas and not relocating that effort elsewhere,” Sala says.

“That will work for marine life, the climate and society at large. It would also allow marine protected areas to fulfil their goal to protect marine life, and eventually help replenish nearby fishing grounds.”

EU member states are already supposed to be working to phase out bottom trawling in MPAs by 2030. So far, Greece and Sweden are the only countries to have announced bans or strong restrictions.

The bloc’s nature laws and international biodiversity commitments bind member states to rigorously protect these supposed safe havens for marine life. They were also given a deadline last year for submitting roadmaps to outline how they plan to phase out destructive fishing in these areas.

“A proper interpretation of the Habitats Directive would mean that bottom trawling should already not be tolerated in EU Marine Protected Areas,” says John Condon, wildlife lawyer at ClientEarth.

“We heard from Commissioner Kadis (Costas Kadis, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans) this month that he is committed to the full enforcement of our nature laws – which we hope means we can expect bottom trawling to be conclusively phased out of EU MPAs designed to protect seabed ecosystems.”

But a recent analysis from marine NGOs Oceana, Seas At Risk and ClientEarth found that no EU country has comprehensive plans to phase out destructive fishing practices in MPAs by the end of the decade.

More than half failed to submit a roadmap. Of those that did, Estonia refused to disclose what was in this roadmap and none had comprehensive plans to phase out destructive fishing practices.

As a result, the coalition of marine NGOs is taking governments to court in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden for infringing EU nature laws by failing to protect their MPAs against the impacts of bottom trawling.