Trawling is a killer for the flora and fauna of our seas

The problems of sea and oceans are not just floating islands of plastic waste that decompose into microplastics, entering our food chain.

There are other systems of systematic destruction of the habitat of fish and aquatic plants, with the production of impressive quantities of CO2 that are released into the atmosphere.

It is trawling, which is one of the most catastrophic inventions of man to destroy the seas and oceans, hitting the seabed, the dens of fish , favoring the indiscriminate fishing of protected or inedible species and the release into the atmosphere of tons of CO2, which in part is also mixed in the water, creating acidity in the seas.

It is known that the seas and oceans absorb a third of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, causing carbon to deposit in marine sediments, which are enormous storage sites for the earth.

We are talking about about one billion tons of CO2 per year, an amount comparable to the sum of the emissions of world air traffic, which trawling removes from the seabed, causing them to re-emerge to the detriment of our health.

But how does this type of fishing happen?

Trawling involves laying out a very large sack net, pulled by two fishing boats, with part of the net sealed so that it can work on the bottom . The simultaneous dragging movement involves a trawl movement that causes the eradication of everything it encounters, indiscriminately destroying the seabed and picking up anything.

In the net remain edible and inedible fish, protected species, corals, species in extinction such as the mako shark, the emery, the belly and the turtles, which are hauled aboard, many times already mortally wounded in an attempt to escape.

In addition, the trawling technique often involves the breaking of the nets that are made of nylon threads, a non-degradable material, which end up carried by currents together with the others plastic waste and with the same destiny, that is to end up on our table through the fish we eat.

Abandoned nets are the worst enemies for dolphins, turtles, baby fish, which end up in them getting entangled, resulting in death almost certain.

According to FAO data, there are about 640,000 tons of abandoned plastic nets in the seas, making up 10% of the plastic waste that floats or moves on average depths driven by currents.

There are some countries that have regulated trawling in order to forbid that the nets scrape the bottom, destroying everything, but allowing this technique at medium depths, they safeguard the habitat of living species.

In addition, the imposed size of the meshes of the nets have a width that allows the escape of small fish, ensuring that the fish of that size can continue to live and to reproduce.

Unfortunately many other countries do not care about the problem, leaving fishing free or controlling little or no consequences of this activity which, among other things, involves a amount of fish waste equal to about 5 million tons per year, unnecessarily dead fish.

Plowing the seabed with this system is certainly more economically advantageous for those who fish, as it intercepts about 20% more fish, but leaves damage to the environment incalculable undermining, over time, the fishing itself.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.