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Different bottom trawl fisheries have a differential impact on the status of the North Sea seafloor habitats

2020, ICES Journal of Marine Science

A D Rijnsdorp, et al. “Different bottom trawl fisheries have a differential impact on the status of the North Sea seafloor habitats”, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Volume 77, Issue 5, September 2020, Pages 1772–1786. 

Trawling is highly aggregated in core fishing grounds where the status of the seafloor is low but the catch per unit of effort (CPUE) per unit of impact is high. In the North Sea, muddy habitats are impacted the most and coarse habitats are impacted the least. Beam trawling for brown shrimps, otter trawling for industrial fish, and dredging for molluscs have the lowest impact.