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Bottom Trawling on Seamounts: The Damage Nobody Sees · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Is there something in your life that really made you or really inspired you to
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  do something that you're doing right now?
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  It could be to listen to this podcast.
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  It could be to advocate for something to protect the ocean.
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  Yesterday, we covered the story of Matthew Gianni, who I'm gonna be interviewing.
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  We're gonna be publishing the interview I did with him this Friday.
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  And we talked about his story from fisherman, like deep-sea trawling
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  fisherman, and a bunch of other types of fisher, but really deep-sea trawling
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  fisherman, and led to him managing the ocean program for Greenpeace
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  International, as well as co-founding the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.
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  And during that time, he started off with his advocacy role really started
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  off with him looking at what the damage he was causing, him and his crew were
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  causing as they were deep-sea fishing, deep-sea trawling off the coast, off the
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  central coast of California, you know, 1,000 meters down, 3,000 feet down.
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  And it led him to eventually co-founding a Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.
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  Huge, huge path to really inspire.
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  But what really made him kind of pull the trigger or led to him pulling the
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  trigger were the studies that we're talking about today, or at least
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  part one study and then an update of that study later on in his life.
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  And that really solidified his knowledge on what deep-sea
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  trawling has and had at the time.
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  This is around late 1990s, early 2000s.
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  So we're gonna be talking about deep-sea trawling on seamounts.
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  We're gonna talk about what seamounts are, we're gonna start all that, and
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  then we're gonna talk about what the study found and what it means about
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  what the study found, and how it really got Matthew to really pull that
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  trigger and start an organization, a coalition of over 80 organizations that
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  have helped put in rules and policies and have a moratorium in the UN on
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  deep-sea trawling in the high seas.
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  So we're gonna talk all about that on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Your source for ocean news, conservation, and science, Monday to Friday.
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  I think we're probably the podcast that publishes the
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  most, but it's here for you.
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  It's here for you to soak up.
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  It's here for you to be inspired by and to lead to better protection of
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  the ocean through your daily life.
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  So if you want to follow that kind of stuff, hit that follow button
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  on your, favorite podcast app, and you can do so, right away.
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  All right, so let's first talk about what seamounts are
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  and why they actually matter.
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  So essentially, they're underwater mountains.
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  Like, they rise at least 1,000 meters above the surrounding seafloor
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  without breaking the surface.
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  So these are underwater mountains.
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  Most are volcanic in origin.
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  Now, the seamount disrupt ocean currents by a process called topographic upwelling.
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  Basically, with their mountain, they have this side of the mountain, and
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  that water from the bottom comes up, it's get pulled up, and it
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  pulls cold, nutrient-rich water up from the depths toward the surface.
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  It's called upwelling, topographic upwelling.
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  That upwelling fuels the blooms of phytoplankton, which feed the
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  rest of the food web in that area near the, closer to the surface.
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  So you have small fish, then bigger fish, then sharks, then tuna, then
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  seabirds, and marine mammals that gather around the seamounts to feed.
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  It's actually quite an interesting area.
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  When you talk about marine protected areas, these are distinctive areas
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  that get protected because they are found in these areas, and
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  they attract such biodiversity.
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  Now, their rocky surfaces on the top of the seamounts give slow-growing stationary
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  animals like corals and sponges a hard place to attach and grow, something
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  rare in the deep-sea soft sediment.
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  So normally it's like a sandy bottom, but now, you have this rocky surface
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  'cause it's a mountain, and there's all these, like, grooves and stuff
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  that these slow-growing animals can grow on, like corals and sponges.
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  Now, on average, roughly one in five species found on seamounts are endemic.
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  They don't exist anywhere on Earth.
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  They only exist there.
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  Some marine scientists call them oasis in the deep sea.
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  It's part of the ocean where it's otherwise cold, dark, and
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  largely empty, and a seamount is where life is concentrated.
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  I think it's kind of interesting to, like, paint that picture.
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  Like, think about just complete darkness, ' cause that, you know, there's
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  no light that gets down 3,000 feet.
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  It's complete darkness.
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  You have all this rocky bottom, but this, like, mountain that comes out, this
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  seamount that comes out of the bottom, and there's all this life around it.
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  You know, there's probably sharks moving around, there's
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  coral sponges, schools of fish.
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  That's what happens before any damage happens to it.
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  That's what happens just as a natural environment.
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  This is how these systems kinda grow.
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  It starts off with corals and sponges and other animals that form the habitat.
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  Then all these fish and invertebrates and bigger fish like sharks
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  and tuna kinda come around and they feed off of the areas.
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  It's a really cool place to be.
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  Now, humans interact with the ocean in ways that help and ways
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  that harm often at the same time through the same industries, right?
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  Sometimes it's not necessarily that they're benefiting the ocean,
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  but the ocean is benefiting us.
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  So commercial fishing feeds billions of people and supports coastal
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  communities worldwide, including around seamounts, which have historically
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  been productive fishing grounds for species like orange roughy.
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  Now, but the same industry that feeds people can also, when practiced certain
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  ways, cause damage that can outlast the benefit by decades or longer.
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  So bottom trawling is one of those practices.
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  It involves, like, dragging those nets.
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  I talked about this in yesterday's episode with Matthew, dragging in heavy nets and
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  gear along the ocean floor to catch fish.
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  And on a seamount, that gear drags directly across corals
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  and sponge habitat that took centuries or even longer to grow.
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  So think about you found, like, these fishers found this habitat.
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  They're like, " We want to fish here because it's important for us because
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  it feeds, coastal areas and , it allows us to feed our families and so forth."
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  But as we fish and we bottom trawl to get those, we destroy all the habitat
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  that's taken, like, centuries to build.
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  Like, centuries to build, Now, I don't want to say that it's fishing that's the
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  problem because, you know, fishing isn't inherently destructive and most fishers
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  are trying not to destroy anything.
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  They want to sustainably fish for a long time, generations and generations.
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  The point here is that, like, even though, like, this practice, it could be legal,
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  common, and economically important, it can still cause a lot of damage that
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  isn't visible from the surface of the, like, of a deck of a boat because they
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  can't see what damage they're causing.
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  Unlike the damage on land when-- like, which people can often see directly.
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  So if somebody goes through, like, with their truck and starts spinning
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  around on a field, you see the damage that can happen to that field.
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  When you put-- Like, damage on the deep sea floor happens, like no one sees it.
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  These seamounts sit around 1,000 meters down, like below the sea surface.
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  So it's far beyond any recreational diver can go.
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  Like I'm on open water.
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  I'm legally allowed or certified to go 100 feet down.
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  Like 100 feet.
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  So imagine what 1,000 meters, nobody's going down there unless you're going
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  in an ROV, or go down in a sub, which some people do, or they take ROVs down.
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  But it's beyond the recreational diving range.
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  It's beyond the sunlight.
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  It's beyond casual observation of any kind.
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  So a trawler can drag its nets across the same seamount hundreds and thousands
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  of times over the years, and from the deck, nothing looks different.
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  It just looks like the surface of the water.
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  And the evidence of destruction just stays down at the bottom.
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  Nobody knows what's happened.
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  And sometimes you don't even know that it's been fished.
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  Without a scientific survey, like specifically designed to go down and look,
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  there's no way to know what has been lost.
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  And like anything was lost, if anything is lost at all, like
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  that's where we're looking at here.
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  The destruction doesn't have to be open, but it's just nobody knows this happens.
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  We can't see it.
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  You know, it goes back to that image I shared on Ocean Decoded
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  Live last week, and I, I had the cartoon, like, redrawn using AI
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  because I couldn't find the cartoon.
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  But essentially there's two people on a deserted island.
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  They're looking out on the ocean, at the surface of the ocean.
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  They're like, "There's nothing here. We have nothing to feed us. There's
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  nothing here." But underneath the surface are all these animals, like, looking
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  up, like, looking teeming with life.
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  Well, same thing, like, we don't know what's happening on a seamount.
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  So I just want you to think about that.
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  You have the seamount that is all this, like, teeming with life, teeming
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  with biodiversity that could help feed with animals and larvae and
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  everything like that, other places, other seamounts, or other habitats
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  get destroyed over years of trawling.
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  Now, there was a study that started in 1997, the team Australian researchers led
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  by Tony Koslow and Karen Gallet Holmes from the CSIRO, Marine Research in Hobart.
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  They surveyed a group of small seamounts south of Tasmania
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  using dredges and cameras.
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  So they started to look at these seamounts.
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  They didn't know how much fishing was going.
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  They had an idea of where things were being fished, but they didn't know
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  exactly, like, any damage caused, right?
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  That's what they wanted to find.
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  Their goal was to assess the impact of trawling for a fish called orange
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  roughy, and to test whether the proposed marine reserve that was gonna go in there
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  would actually work to protect the area.
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  So they surveyed 14 seamounts, both inside and outside in an interim protected area,
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  deliberately choosing sites ranging from completely unfished to heavily fished.
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  So they're gonna see what the damage is on these areas and what, like,
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  what happens when you fish on an area heavily and when you don't
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  fish at all, and then in the middle.
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  That gave researchers, like, something rare in ocean science, a way to compare
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  seamounts that had experienced years of trawling against ones that had, like,
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  essentially been left alone, right?
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  Similar starting conditions, one variable difference.
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  So like, like this is the hypo- this is how science works.
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  I'm taking you into the mind of a scientist looking and saying, "Hey,
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  there's a lot of fishing going on in these areas, and there's a lot of
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  seamounts around. Let's start taking a look at what the damage is on these
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  heavily fished areas, and if there is, like, is it causing that much damage?"
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  This orange roughy is probably a commercially important species.
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  It feeds a lot of people, it feeds a lot of industries.
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  So how do we make sure that we are doing this properly, sustainably,
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  and making sure that we're not damaging the whole thing?
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  And maybe they won't be able to fish orange roughy after they've destroyed
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  all these habitats as they move from seamount to seamount to seamount.
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  So here's what the researchers found.
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  The diversity itself was a discovery in its own.
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  That single 1997 survey that they did turned up 262 invertebrate species and 37
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  species, compared to only 598 invertebrate species reported from every seamount
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  study conducted worldwide before 1987.
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  So one survey nearly matched decades of prior global research.
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  Now, on the untrawled and lightly fished seamounts, the restructure
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  was dense, diverse, and beautiful.
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  It was all alive.
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  On the other hand, the heavily trawled seamounts included two named Main, Pedra
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  and Sister, those are the seamounts, told a completely different story.
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  Their reef aggregate was almost stripped from the slopes, or reduced to rubble.
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  Benthic biomass on heavily fished seamounts was 83% lower than the lightly
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  fished ones or unfished ones, and there were 59% fewer species per sample.
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  That's a huge difference.
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  A follow-up study published in 2009 by Althaus and colleagues went even
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  further analyzing over 64,000 video frames across 25 seamounts, not 14,
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  and more than 700 high-resolution images across seven seamounts.
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  I assume that's within the 25 seamounts.
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  It found trawling had reduced coral cover by roughly two orders of
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  magnitude, close to a hundredfold, and it caused threefold declines in
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  richness, diversity, and density across the rest of the seafloor community.
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  I guess, incredible difference.
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  Like perhaps the most sobering finding came from the 2009 study.
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  On seamounts where trawling had already stopped five years earlier, there
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  was a no clear sign of recovery.
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  So once the damage was done, it didn't come back in five years, right?
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  It wasn't just severe.
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  These things, like appeared to be effectively permanent, at least on any
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  timescale that mattered to human life.
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  So if you go back to what I mentioned at the beginning, these seamounts
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  have taken centuries to build this coral and sponge cover and all
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  these different habitat covers.
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  It's not a system that is wonderfully beautiful and light.
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  It is a dark system, like no light.
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  There's a lot of currents and everything like that going across, and these animals
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  are extremely slow-growing and sensitive.
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  And so as these animals grow, and takes like centuries to create,
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  and gone within moments of a trawl or a number of different trawls,
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  we can't expect that the fish are gonna come back within five years.
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  It just doesn't work that way.
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  The deep sea is different.
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  The species are different.
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  They grow slower.
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  They don't have the same mechanisms as the species at the surface especially
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  corals and sponges, that are able to grow with sunlight because of their symbionts.
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  They grow different ways, and they grow slower.
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  You are seeing how destruction at such a level, whether it's just moments,
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  how the recovery takes so long.
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  I want you to think about that as you start thinking about pressures on the
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  deep sea, trawling, deep-sea mining.
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  Just imagine having video of this area.
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  Like I watch Nautilus Live, like it's a cool program.
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  They go to sea, and they have like educational things, and these are the
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  ones where you see these ROVs go down, and you see like people on, their voices
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  on the camera be like, "Oh, look at that.
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  "It's a dumbo octopus." Or you see all these others, like, "There's
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  a rockfish here," or something.
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  And they really enjoy seeing what they see.
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  Imagine being a researcher.
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  You're going down with an ROV, and you're watching this, and you
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  see these images of just rubble.
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  It's gotta be heartbreaking when you see seamounts that are just
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  teeming with life, and then you go to ones that are just rubble.
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  And five years later, you go back, and nothing came back.
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  Nothing.
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  You know, seamounts often carry relatively high levels of endemism.
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  That means, species that exist only on that seamount and nowhere else.
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  So if that seamount is trawled that heavily, for anyone has ever surveyed
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  like what lived there, there's no way to know what existed or what didn't, right?
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  So not only are we losing habitat, but we're losing species that
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  could help us as humans or just help the system in general.
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  A well-known deep sea biologist made this point plainly, saying
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  that we may be losing species on seamounts from bottom trawling that
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  we haven't even discovered yet.
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  It's not only about the damage anymore.
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  It raised the possibility of undiscovered extinctions, species erased
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  before science ever even knew them.
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  Like, that is the huge gut punch of all of this.
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  It's not just habitat loss, it's the fact that we are losing entire species
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  before we even knew they were there.
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  And a lot of you are like, "Well, we didn't know them, so, you know, no harm,
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  no foul." But these species could be pivotal in like the Earth's future, could
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  be pivotal in understanding how these species are only found in certain spots
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  around the world on these seamounts.
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  It's just absence.
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  We don't know what they are.
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  We don't know what they were.
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  They're just gone, and it's just because of our destruction.
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  This is the study that got Matthew Gianni, who was a deep sea fisherman,
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  to say, " This can't happen anymore.
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  We need to protect these seamounts.
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  We need to protect the deep sea.
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  We need to really understand the impact of fishing without knowing
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  what we are destroying or that we're even destroying." 'Cause some
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  people may have just said, "Well, yeah, we're not destroying anything.
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  It's just fine.
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  We keep going back, and we keep getting fish." But for how long?
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  And what's the recovery?
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  I can understand if you're gonna deep sea trawl one little area,
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  and then it can recover quickly because it's near the surface.
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  But if we know now that after five years we're not seeing any recovery in
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  the deep sea, is it really worth going back and fishing again until we destroy
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  everything and we lose everything on that seamount or multiple seamounts?
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  And I want you to say, like, think about the same thing when
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  it comes to deep sea mining.
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  ' Cause there are studies that show that there was major impact in deep sea
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  mining, and it didn't recover four years, three or four years later.
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  I'm starting to see, like, a trend here.
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  I'm not saying it's scientific, and I'm not saying it's real, but it's
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  starting to sound like things in the deep sea don't recover as quickly
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  as some of the other habitats that we've seen in the shallower waters.
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  So something for you to think about.
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  This story inspired Matthew to co-found the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition and
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  work with the UN General Assembly and the FAO and a number of other bodies
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  to put in international moratorium on deep sea fishing in the high seas.
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  This is what inspired the change.
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  These two studies, and his history with deep sea fishing and trawling.
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  That's what gets people to do amazing things.
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  And that's what Matthew did.
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  And these studies that show, like, some crazy emotional changes, right?
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  Some physical changes, and emotional for us to see, wow, we're actually
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  doing a lot of damage for what, right?
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  Is it really worth it?
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  And it needs to be managed a lot better.
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  A lot better.
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  But that's the episode for today.
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  I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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  You can contact me.
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  If you're on Spotify, give me a comment.
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  Love to hear your thoughts on this episode.
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  Also, my socials are in the show notes, so you can just DM me
• 15:54
  on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you'd like to contact me.
• 15:57
  Also on YouTube, do Ocean Decoded live.
• 15:59
  Just started this show Monday to Thursday live at 4:00 PM Eastern.
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  Check it out.
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  We cover all different things around the ocean.
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  All right?
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  So I wanna thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
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  How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.