Carbon released by bottom trawling ‘too big to ignore’, says study

Fishing nets churn up carbon from the sea floor, more than half of which will eventually be released into the atmosphere

Scientists have long known that bottom trawling - the practice of dragging massive nets along the seabed to catch fish - churns up carbon from the sea floor. Now, for the first time, researchers have calculated just how much trawling releases into the atmosphere: 370m tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year - an amount, they say, that is too big to ignore".

Over the study period, 1996-2020, they estimated the total carbon dioxide released from trawling to the atmosphere to be 8.5 to 9.2bn tonnes. The scientists described trawling as marine deforestation" that causes irreparable harm" to the climate, society and wildlife.