Best practices for managing impacts of trawl fishing on seabed habitats and biota

MCCONNAUGHEY, ROBERT A.; PITCHER, C. ROLAND; RIJNSDORP, ADRIAAN D; AMOROSO, RICARDO O; HILBORN, RAY; JENNINGS, SIMON; SUURONEN, PETRI; MAZOR, TESSA; HIDDINK, JAN GEERT; COLLIE, JEREMY S.; KAISER, MICHEL J.; SCIBERRAS, MARIJA; PARMA, ANA M

Congreso; ICES Annual Science Conference 2019; 2019

ICES

Bottom trawling accounts for almost one quarter of global fish landings but may alsohave significant and unwanted impacts on seabed habitats and biota. Managementmeasures and voluntary industry actions can reduce these impacts, help to meet sustainability objectives for fisheries, conservation and environmental management, andultimately improve trade-offs between food production and environmental protection.Measures and actions include changes in gear design and operation (gear prohibitions,gear and fishing modifications), spatial controls (freezing footprint, nearshorerestrictions, prohibitions by habitat type, multipurpose habitat management, real-timeclosures), impact quotas (habitat or invertebrate bycatch quotas), and effort limitation(with indirect effects on the intensity and distribution of trawling). We review theeffectiveness of these measures and actions and use published studies and a simpleconceptual model to evaluate and compare their performance. The risks and benefits ofmeasures to reduce trawling impacts on the seabed depend on the extent to which thefishery is already achieving management objectives for target stocks and thecharacteristics of the management system that is already in place. We offer guidance onidentifying best practices for trawl fisheries management, and show that best practicesand their likelihood of success depend on local, national and regional managementobjectives and priorities, societal values, and resources for implementation. As such,there is not a universal best practice and no single management measure or industryaction is likely to be sufficient. Typically a suite of practices will be needed, in part tooffset the potentially negative consequences of some measures.