October 3, 2024 — Most people would agree: a bottom trawler is a trawler that drags the ocean bottom.
Apparently, to those who make the rules, it’s more complicated than that.
Trawlers that drag the bottom between 40% and 100% of the time, depending on vessel type, are currently allowed to trawl in sensitive areas closed, for conservation, to both bottom trawlers and directed fishermen such as crabbers. In the process, these trawlers destroy the ocean floor, molting crab, and the slow-growing cold-water coral habitat essential for healthy ocean ecosystems, halibut populations and crab populations.
The hangup? The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is tasked with regulating trawlers and their impact on communities but whose voting members are mostly trawl industry representatives, does not define bottom-dragging trawlers as trawlers that drag the bottom. Instead, these particular trawlers are defined as midwater, or “pelagic” trawlers, since while their net may drag bottom, the mouth of their nets hovers above the ocean floor.
Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News