I recall watching Attenborough’s ‘The World About Us’ series on a black and white TV as a child back in the late 1960’s, he has been a constant companion producing fine environmental documentaries up until the present day with the release in May 2025 of ‘Ocean’. Like many, I was moved by the initial beautiful imagery and then deeply disturbed by footage of the impacts of Deep Sea Trawling. In my view this abominable practice must cease. I offer the following essay as a contribution to raising awareness and by way of thanks to Sir Dave for his wonderful life’s work. You might also be interested in reading The Urgent Need for the Rapid Expansion of the Global Marine Parks Network – Kevin Parker- Site Publisher
On his 99th birthday in May 2025, Sir David Attenborough delivered what may be his most urgent marine conservation message yet. In “Ocean with David Attenborough,” the legendary naturalist presented the first-ever high-quality footage of bottom trawling in action—iron chains bulldozing across the seabed, leaving trails of devastation visible from space.¹ “It’s hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish,” Attenborough declared, his voice carrying the weight of decades spent documenting our planet’s decline.² This unprecedented visual evidence of deep sea trawling’s destructive power arrives at a critical juncture, when the global fishing industry extracts marine life from depths once thought unreachable, operating in a regulatory twilight zone where profit margins depend on government subsidies and environmental costs remain largely externalized.
The deep sea trawling industry represents a stark paradox of modern industrial fishing: contributing less than 0.5% to global fish landings while causing disproportionate ecological damage across 15 million square kilometers of ocean floor annually—an area 150 times larger than all forests cleared each year.³ This investigation reveals how a small consortium of multinational corporations and fishing nations has industrialized the ocean’s final frontier, deploying vessels with 10,000-horsepower engines to drag nets the size of football fields across ancient coral reefs and seamounts that predate human civilization.
The industrial giants dominating ocean extraction
The global deep sea trawling industry operates as an oligopoly dominated by Asian corporate giants and heavily subsidized national fleets. At the apex stands Japan’s Maruha Nichiro Corporation, commanding $7.2 billion in annual revenue and operating across 26 countries with assets exceeding $4.5 billion, according to the World Benchmark Alliance⁴ This corporate behemoth exemplifies the industry’s vertical integration strategy, controlling everything from fishing vessels to processing plants to retail distribution networks. Close behind, Nippon Suisan Kaisha generates $5.7 billion annually, while Thailand’s Thai Union Group—supplier to major Western retailers—reports $3.8 billion in revenue from operations spanning tuna and shrimp fisheries globally.⁵
South Korea’s Dongwon Industries deploys a fleet of 40 vessels across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, generating $5.7 billion in revenue while exporting to premium markets in Japan, the United States, and Europe.⁶ These corporations operate with quasi-governmental support, receiving subsidies that in some cases exceed their actual fishing revenues. The Spanish deep sea fleet, for instance, receives subsidies equivalent to 99.42% of its turnover—essentially a publicly funded private enterprise generating $637 million in revenue against $603 million in government support.⁷
In his article, “Subsidizing China’s Fishing Fleet, Ian Urbina tells us China’s distant-water fleet dwarfs all competitors with approximately 2,600 vessels, three times larger than the next four countries combined.⁸ This armada operates under minimal oversight, with many vessels classified as “three no” boats—no license, no registration, no inspection—exploiting regulatory gaps in international waters. The Chinese government provides $7.2 billion annually in fishing subsidies, representing 20% of the global total and enabling operations that would otherwise be economically unviable.⁹
The concentration of market power extends beyond corporate entities to national fleets. Japan alone accounts for 20% of global high seas fishing subsidies, spending $841 million annually to maintain operations where subsidy intensity reaches 103% of turnover—the government essentially pays more than the entire value of the catch.¹⁰ This economic irrationality persists because deep sea fishing serves geopolitical purposes beyond mere food production, projecting national power into international waters and securing claims to marine resources.
Economic architecture of oceanic exploitation
The deep sea trawling sector operates within a $472 billion global fisheries and aquaculture industry, with marine capture fisheries valued at $157 billion annually.¹¹ Yet beneath these impressive figures lies a troubling economic reality: the industry survives primarily through massive public subsidization rather than market viability. Global fisheries subsidies total $35.4 billion annually, with $22.2 billion classified as “harmful”—directly encouraging overfishing and overcapacity.¹²
The trawler boat market itself represents a $45.77 billion sector growing at 4.5% annually, driven by technological advances that enable exploitation of ever-deeper waters.¹³ Factory ships like the Annelies Ilena (below) stretch 144 meters long and process 350 tonnes of fish daily, operating for six weeks or more at sea with crews of 35 to 100 workers.¹⁴ These floating factories carry up to 3,000 tons of fuel and can freeze 7,000 tons of catch, transforming remote ocean basins into industrial extraction zones.
Employment in the sector appears substantial at first glance, with 61.8 million people working in fisheries globally.¹⁵ However, deep sea trawling’s capital-intensive nature means it provides relatively few jobs per dollar invested compared to small-scale fisheries. The industry’s employment is concentrated in Asia (85% of jobs) and characterized by dangerous working conditions—commercial fishing remains the world’s deadliest occupation, with massive otter boards weighing over a ton causing regular fatalities.¹⁶
The economic inefficiency becomes stark when examining profitability without subsidies. Research shows 54% of high seas fishing would be unprofitable without government support, with deep sea bottom trawling losing $230 million annually and squid fishing losing $345 million without subsidies.¹⁷ The global fishing industry delivers $83 billion less value annually than it would under sustainable management—a massive destruction of economic potential driven by short-term extraction logic.¹⁸
Market dynamics reveal further distortions. High-value species like bluefin tuna command prices up to $41.56 per kilogram, creating powerful incentives for targeting slow-growing deep sea species.¹⁹ Orange roughy, which can live 200 years and doesn’t reach sexual maturity until age 20-35, saw virgin catches of 9-10 tons per tow in the 1980s collapse to 2-3 tons per tow by the late 1990s—a classic boom-bust cycle repeated across deep sea fisheries globally.²⁰
Technologies of destruction
Modern deep sea trawling deploys an arsenal of sophisticated technologies that transform fishing vessels into mobile seafloor excavation platforms. Bottom trawl nets stretch 80 to 200 meters wide, with trawl doors—massive steel plates weighing up to 5,000 kilograms each—that spread the net mouth while pulverizing everything in their path.²¹ These doors create seabed pressure equivalent to heavy construction equipment, leaving furrows visible in satellite imagery decades after trawling ceases.
The nets themselves employ various configurations optimized for different terrains and species. Otter trawls, the most common deep sea configuration, use hydrodynamic doors to maintain horizontal spread while rock hoppers—large molded rubber discs—enable operation over rough bottoms that would destroy conventional gear.²² For seamount fishing targeting orange roughy at depths of 500-1,500 meters, vessels deploy nets with headrope lengths reaching 81 meters and reinforced construction to withstand contact with volcanic rock.²³
Factory trawlers represent the pinnacle of industrial fishing technology. Vessels like the Northern Eagle process 50,000 fish per hour through automated filleting lines, vertical plate freezers, and surimi production facilities.²⁴ These ships operate with engines generating up to 10,000 horsepower, though bottom trawling safety regulations typically limit power to 2,000 horsepower to prevent catastrophic net failures.²⁵ Fuel consumption averages 2.9 liters per kilogram of landed fish, generating 7.6 kilograms of CO₂ per kilogram of catch—among the highest carbon intensities in food production.²⁶
Navigation and fish-finding technologies have revolutionized deep sea operations. Multibeam echosounders map seafloor topography while simultaneously detecting fish aggregations, while net sounders monitor fish concentration around the net opening in real-time.²⁷ Vessels employ GPS-guided autopilot systems that can repeatedly trawl the same GPS tracks with meter-level precision, systematically strip-mining productive areas until depleted.
The operational parameters reveal the industrial scale of extraction. Trawling occurs primarily at depths between 400 and 2,000 meters, with vessels towing nets at 2.5-4.0 knots for optimal door function.²⁸ A typical deep sea trawling operation involves 18-hour working days with continuous net deployment, hauling, and processing cycles. Midwater trawls targeting pelagic species can operate at speeds up to 5 knots with minimal seabed contact, but the valuable demersal species that justify deep sea operations require bottom contact that destroys millennia-old habitats.²⁹
Measuring ecological annihilation
The environmental impact of deep sea trawling defies comprehension in its scale and permanence. Bottom trawling affects 4.9 million square kilometers of ocean floor annually from trackable vessels alone, with estimates reaching 15 million square kilometers when including the entire global fleet—equivalent to clear-cutting the Amazon rainforest every year.³⁰ The practice resuspends approximately 22 gigatons of sediment annually, equal to all sediment deposited by rivers globally, creating sediment plumes 2-4 meters high and 120-150 meters wide that smother marine life far beyond the trawl path.³¹
Each pass of a bottom trawl kills 4.7% to 26.1% of benthic invertebrates, depending on gear type and substrate.³² In intensively fished areas like the North Sea, over 90% of the seafloor experiences trawling at least annually, with some areas trawled six times per year—a frequency that prevents any ecosystem recovery.³³ The Adriatic Sea exemplifies this industrial-scale habitat destruction, with 82% of the seabed trawled at frequencies that eliminate sensitive species proportional to the trawled area.³⁴
Cold-water coral reefs, which grow at rates of merely 1-2 centimeters annually, face complete annihilation from trawling.³⁵ In Norwegian waters, 30-50% of cold-water coral reefs show partial or total damage from trawling, with some destroyed reefs dating back 4,550 years.³⁶ The Darwin Mounds off Scotland, protected in 2003 after extensive trawling damage, show no coral recolonization after eight years of protection—highlighting that recovery, if possible at all, occurs on geological rather than human timescales.³⁷
Climate impacts add another dimension to trawling’s destructive legacy. The practice releases 0.58 to 1.47 petagrams of aqueous CO₂ annually from disturbed sediments, with an estimated 370 million tons reaching the atmosphere—roughly equivalent to the emissions of global aviation.³⁸ Ocean sediments store 2,322 petagrams of carbon in the top meter, nearly twice that of terrestrial soils, making their disturbance a significant contributor to climate change.³⁹ The released carbon that remains dissolved in seawater increases local ocean acidification, compounding stress on marine ecosystems already struggling with warming temperatures.
The wasteland of bycatch and discards
Deep sea trawling generates staggering waste through indiscriminate catch methods that destroy far more marine life than reaches markets. The global deep sea fishing industry discarded an estimated 6 million tons of marine life between 1950 and 2014, with discard rates averaging 39.6% in the Northeast Atlantic and reaching up to 90% in some fisheries.⁴⁰ Bottom trawls account for 46% of global fishing discards despite representing a smaller fraction of total fishing effort—the inevitable result of dragging nets across biodiverse seafloor habitats.⁴¹
Target species themselves reveal the industry’s fundamental unsustainability. Orange roughy, which commanded premium prices in international markets, can live over 200 years and doesn’t reach sexual maturity until age 20-35.⁴² Between 1950 and 2015, the industry extracted 1.8 million tons of orange roughy, with only 1.2 million tons reported—a 50% discrepancy highlighting the massive underreporting endemic to deep sea fisheries.⁴³ Greenland halibut catches totaled 7.64 million tons over the same period, with 2.75 million tons unreported, while grenadier discards exceeded 2.5 million tons—most thrown overboard dead as “trash fish.”⁴⁴
The bycatch composition varies dramatically with depth, revealing how trawling becomes less selective in deeper waters. At 600 meters depth, the discard-to-commercial biomass ratio stands at 0.3:1, but by 1,300 meters depth, this ratio balloons to 1.6:1—more marine life is destroyed than harvested.⁴⁵ Shrimp trawling represents the extreme end of this waste spectrum, with discard rates reaching 80-90% in some fisheries before technological interventions like Nordmøre grates reduced bycatch from over 20% to under 5%.⁴⁶
Even within “successful” bycatch reduction programs, the fundamental inefficiency persists. New Zealand’s orange roughy fisheries report a 0.7% bycatch rate—seemingly minimal until considering that this translates to hundreds of tons of dead marine life per year, including 522 seabirds and 152 marine mammals killed by bottom trawling in a single 12-month period.⁴⁷ The cumulative impact across all deep sea fisheries represents an ongoing extinction event for vulnerable species that evolved in stable deep sea environments over millions of years.
The regulatory vacuum
The governance of deep sea trawling reveals a patchwork of regulations riddled with enforcement gaps and jurisdictional ambiguities. While the European Union banned bottom trawling below 800 meters in 2016 and mandated closure of areas below 400 meters where Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems exist, implementation remains incomplete nearly a decade later.⁴⁸ The establishment of “footprint” areas where historical fishing occurred missed its 2018 deadline, and harmonized observer coverage across member states remains aspirational rather than operational.⁴⁹
The United States applies the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s Essential Fish Habitat protections and has established Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Programs, yet vast areas of American waters remain open to bottom trawling.⁵⁰ Recent Amendment 34 created specific coral research areas in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, but such protections remain exceptions rather than rules across U.S. federal waters.⁵¹
Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) theoretically govern high seas fishing, but consensus-based decision-making allows individual nations to block conservation measures. The North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission prohibits bottom fishing in 98% of its regulatory area—a seeming victory until recognizing that the remaining 2% includes the most productive fishing grounds.⁵² China and Russia have blocked new Marine Protected Area proposals in the Commission for Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources since 2016, despite that organization’s complete prohibition on bottom trawling in its convention area.⁵³
China’s distant-water fleet operates under minimal restrictions, with many vessels classified as “three no” boats evading all oversight.⁵⁴ Despite a nominal cap of 3,000 distant-water vessels by 2020, enforcement remains weak, and recent amendments allow existing trawling practices to continue despite bans on new vessel construction.⁵⁵ This regulatory arbitrage enables the world’s largest fishing fleet to operate with near impunity in international waters.
National enforcement reveals similar weaknesses. The United Kingdom achieved its first-ever prosecution for illegal bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas only in May 2025—a French trawler fined £40,000 after years of documented violations.⁵⁶ The UK has announced bans on bottom trawling in 41 MPAs covering 30,000 square kilometers, yet industry groups claim “high levels of compliance” while arguing trawling remains compatible with protection objectives where it “doesn’t significantly harm” protected features—a standard so vague as to be meaningless.⁵⁷
International frameworks and their limitations
The international legal architecture governing deep sea trawling consists of overlapping agreements with limited enforcement mechanisms. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea establishes basic maritime zones and qualified fishing freedoms, but its provisions for marine environment protection lack specificity for deep sea ecosystems.⁵⁸ UN General Assembly resolutions since 2004 have called for protecting Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems, but these non-binding instruments depend entirely on voluntary compliance by flag states.⁵⁹
The 2023 Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement represents potential progress, providing a framework for establishing Marine Protected Areas on the high seas.⁶⁰ However, the agreement requires ratification by 60 countries to enter force and currently has only 50 signatories—with major fishing nations conspicuously absent or delaying ratification.⁶¹ Even when operational, the BBNJ Agreement will complement rather than replace existing RFMO frameworks, perpetuating the fragmented governance that enables continued destruction.
The FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and International Guidelines for Deep-sea Fisheries provide technical frameworks for sustainable practice, but remain voluntary instruments without enforcement mechanisms.⁶² The Port State Measures Agreement, entering force in 2016, enables port inspections and denial of services to vessels engaged in illegal fishing, yet many major ports lack capacity or political will for implementation.⁶³
Monitoring and enforcement technologies offer technical solutions undermined by political realities. Vessel Monitoring Systems and Automatic Identification Systems can track fishing vessel movements, but vessels routinely disable these systems when engaging in illegal fishing.⁶⁴ Synthetic Aperture Radar can detect vessels with transponders disabled, but the vast expense of comprehensive satellite surveillance exceeds most nations’ enforcement budgets.⁶⁵ Global Fishing Watch provides open-access tracking of global fishing activity, yet this transparency tool cannot compel compliance when authorities lack will or capacity for enforcement.
The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, adopted in 2022, aims to eliminate harmful subsidies that enable overcapacity and overfishing.⁶⁶ Yet only 81 of 166 WTO members have ratified the agreement, and major subsidizers continue supporting their fleets while negotiating implementation details.⁶⁷ Without subsidy reform, the economic drivers of unsustainable fishing remain intact regardless of conservation agreements.
Future trajectories and the possibility of change
The deep sea trawling industry stands at an inflection point where technological capability for destruction intersects with growing scientific understanding of irreversible damage. Recent developments suggest potential for change: the UN Ocean Conference 2025 in Nice produced 800 voluntary commitments toward ocean protection, while 19 additional countries ratified the High Seas Treaty during proceedings.⁶⁸ The conference reaffirmed goals to protect 30% of oceans by 2030, though current protection covers only 8.4% with merely 2.7% effectively managed.⁶⁹
Technological innovations offer pathways toward reduced impact, including selective gear modifications like T90 meshes and modified codends that reduce bycatch while maintaining target catches.⁷⁰ Real-time monitoring systems could enable dynamic management, closing areas when vulnerable species are detected. Yet these incremental improvements cannot address the fundamental incompatibility between industrial-scale extraction and deep sea ecosystem integrity.
Economic pressures may succeed where regulation has failed. Rising fuel costs make deep sea operations increasingly marginal even with subsidies.⁷¹ Consumer demand for sustainable seafood drives certification requirements, with 83 bottom-trawl fisheries achieving Marine Stewardship Council certification—though environmental groups dispute these assessments.⁷² Insurance companies and financial institutions increasingly consider environmental risks in underwriting and lending decisions, potentially restricting capital access for destructive practices.
Alternative protein sources, from aquaculture to cellular agriculture, could reduce pressure on wild fisheries. Global aquaculture already exceeds wild capture in volume, though environmental impacts of industrial fish farming present different challenges.⁷³ Plant-based and cultivated seafood alternatives attract billions in investment, promising to decouple seafood consumption from ocean extraction within decades.
Conclusion
David Attenborough’s footage of bottom trawling—iron chains bulldozing across the seabed, leaving scars visible from space—provides visual testimony to what scientists have documented for decades: the systematic destruction of Earth’s last wilderness for marginal economic gain. The deep sea trawling industry embodies the pathology of late-stage extractive capitalism, where public subsidies enable private profits while externalizing catastrophic environmental costs across space and time.
The numbers tell a story of breathtaking inefficiency and waste: $35.4 billion in annual subsidies supporting an industry that would lose hundreds of millions without government support, discarding 40% of everything caught while destroying habitats that required millennia to develop.⁷⁴ The 15 million square kilometers of seafloor trawled annually for less than 0.5% of global fish production represents perhaps history’s greatest mismatch between economic value and ecological destruction.⁷⁵
Yet within this chronicle of devastation lie seeds of transformation. The scientific evidence is incontrovertible, the technology for monitoring and enforcement exists, and public awareness grows with each revelation of industry practice. The question is not whether deep sea trawling can continue—ecosystem collapse and economic reality ensure it cannot—but whether humanity will choose managed transition or chaotic collapse.
The ocean floor’s salvation requires confronting comfortable lies about sustainable extraction from ecosystems that evolved in stability over geological time. It demands recognizing that some forms of resource use are fundamentally incompatible with planetary boundaries. As Attenborough concluded in his 99th year, “If we save the sea, we save our world.”⁷⁶ The inverse is equally true: if we continue destroying the sea’s foundation, we destroy our own.
Notes
¹ “Ocean with David Attenborough,” Silverback Films and National Geographic, directed by Rachel Scott, aired June 7, 2025, accessed August 9, 2025, https://silverbackfilms.tv/shows/oceanwithdavidattenborough/.
² David Attenborough, quoted in “Ocean with David Attenborough,” National Geographic, June 7, 2025.
³ Enric Sala et al., “Protecting the Global Ocean for Biodiversity, Food and Climate,” Nature 592 (2021): 397-402, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03371-z.
⁴ “Maruha Nichiro Corporation Annual Report 2024,” World Benchmarking Alliance, Seafood Stewardship Index, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.worldbenchmarkingalliance.org/publication/seafood-stewardship-index/companies/maruha-nichiro/.
⁵ “These Are the World’s 30 Largest Seafood Companies,” SalmonBusiness, December 15, 2023, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.salmonbusiness.com/these-are-the-worlds-30-largest-seafood-companies/.
⁶ “Japan: Leading Companies Fishing Industry by Total Assets 2024,” Statista, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.statista.com/statistics/895713/japan-leading-marine-products-companies-by-total-assets/.
⁷ “Spain: Deep-sea Fishing Gets as Much Aid as Its Turnover,” Agroberichten Buitenland, August 21, 2018, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.agroberichtenbuitenland.nl/actueel/nieuws/2018/08/21/spanish-deep-sea-fleet.
⁸ Ian Urbina, “Subsidizing China’s Fishing Fleet,” The Outlaw Ocean Project, November 2023, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.theoutlawocean.com/reporting/subsidizing-chinas-fishing-fleet/.
⁹ Tabitha Grace Mallory, “China’s Deep Sea Fishing Industry Relies on Fuel Subsidies,” Dialogue Earth, March 15, 2024, accessed August 9, 2025, https://dialogue.earth/en/ocean/641-china-fishing-industry-fuel-subsidies/.
¹⁰ Enric Sala et al., “The Economics of Fishing the High Seas,” Science Advances 4, no. 6 (2018): eaat2504, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat2504.
¹¹ FAO, “FAO Report: Global Fisheries and Aquaculture Production Reaches a New Record High,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, June 7, 2024, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/fao-report-global-fisheries-and-aquaculture-production-reaches-a-new-record-high/en.
¹² Isabel Jarrett, “A Global Deal to End Harmful Fisheries Subsidies,” The Pew Charitable Trusts, Winter 2023, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trust/archive/winter-2023/a-global-deal-to-end-harmful-fisheries-subsidies.
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³⁹ Trisha B. Atwood et al., “Atmospheric Carbon Emissions from Benthic Trawling Depend on Water Depth and Ocean Circulation,” Frontiers in Marine Science 11 (2024): 1310318, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2024.1310318.
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⁴³ Maria José Juan-Jordá et al., “Report Card on Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management in Tuna Regional Fisheries Management Organizations,” Fish and Fisheries 19, no. 2 (2018): 321-339, https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12256.
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⁴⁹ European Commission, “Proposal for a Council Regulation on the Sustainable Management of External Fishing Fleets,” COM(2007) 605 final, October 10, 2007, accessed August 9, 2025, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52007PC0605.
⁵⁰ U.S. Government, “Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006,” Public Law 109-479, January 12, 2007, accessed August 9, 2025, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-109publ479/html/PLAW-109publ479.htm.
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⁵³ Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, “Ocean Lifelines: Seamounts, Science, and the Path Forward for 2025,” January 2025, accessed August 9, 2025, https://deep-sea-conservation.org/ocean-lifelines-seamounts-science-and-the-path-forward-for-2025/.
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