September 5, 2013 — A new study conducted by Dutch scientists in the North Sea suggests there may actually be some unexpected benefits from bottom trawling.
The report, entitled "When does fishing lead to more fish? Community consequences of bottom trawl fisheries in demersal food webs," was commissioned by the Wageningen Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies (IMARES) in the Netherlands.
The findings were published Wednesday by the Royal Society in England.
Plaice and sole studied
The study focused on flatfish such as plaice and sole, and how those species — and their food — reacted to standard beam trawling.
Some of the results were surprising.
"What we found is that the indirect effects or side-effects of trawling — namely, the sort of selective removal of certain types of bottom life — sort of makes the system more productive in terms of food for the fish that fishermen target," said Tobias Van Kooten, one of three authors of the report, along with Daniel van Denderen and Adriaan Rijnsdorp.
The focus of the research was to model the effects of bottom trawling on fish species and food sources that are either resistant or susceptible to bottom trawling.
Read the full story at the CBC
View the study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Read an analysis of the study from Earth Times