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Abstract

Bottom trawlers land around 19 million tons of fish and invertebrates annually, almost one-quarter of wild marine landings. The extent of bottom trawling footprint (seabed area trawled at least once in a specified region and time period) is often contested but poorly described. We quantify footprints using high-resolution satellite vessel monitoring system (VMS) and logbook data on 24 continental shelves and slopes to 1,000-m depth over at least 2 years. Trawling footprint varied markedly among regions: from 50% in some European seas. Overall, 14% of the 7.8 million-km2 study area was trawled, and 86% was not trawled. Trawling activity was aggregated; the most intensively trawled areas accounting for 90% of activity comprised 77% of footprint on average. Regional swept area ratio (SAR; ratio of total swept area trawled annually to total area of region, a metric of trawling intensity) and footprint area were related, providing an approach to estimate regional trawling footprints when high resolution spatial data are unavailable. If SAR was =0.1, as in 8 of 24 regions, there was > 95% probability that > 90%of seabed was not trawled. If SAR was 7.9, equal to the highest SAR recorded, there was > 95% probability that >70% of seabed was trawled. Footprints were smaller and SAR was =0.25 in regions where fishing rates consistently met international sustainability benchmarks for fish stocks, implying collateral environmental benefits from sustainable fishing.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Amoroso, RO and Pitcher, CR and Rijnsdorp, AD and McConnaughey, RA and Parma, AM and Suuronen, P and Eigaard, OR and Bastardie, F and Hintzen, NT and Althaus, F and Baird, SJ and Black, J and Buhl-Mortensen, L and Campbell, AB and Catarino, R and Collie, J and Cowan, JH and Durholtz, D and Engstrom, N and Fairweather, TP and Fock, HO and Ford, R and Galvez, PA and Gerritsen, H and Gongora, ME and Gonzalez, JA and Hiddink, JG and Hughes, KM and Intelmann, SS and Jenkins, C and Jonsson, P and Kainge, P and Kangas, M and Kathena, JN and Kavadas, S and Leslie, RW and Lewise, SG and Lundy, M and Makin, D and Martin, J and Mazor, T and Gonzalez-Mirelis, G and Newman, SJ and Papadopoulou, N and Posen, PE and Rochester, W and Russo, T and Sala, A and Semmens, JM and Silva, C and Tsoloso, A and Vanelslander, B and Wakefield, CB and Wood, BA and Hilborn, R and Kaiser, MJ and Jennings, S
Keywords:	fisheries, effort, footprint, habitat, seabed
Journal or Publication Title:	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher:	Natl Acad Sciences
ISSN:	0027-8424
DOI / ID Number:	10.1073/pnas.1802379115
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2018 The Authors. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Semmens, JM UTAS Profile: Semmens, JM
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