Trawling. © AMNH   What is Trawling? Trawling is a widespread method of catching marine fishes and invertebrates in which ships pull funnel-shaped nets through the sea. Although industrialized fishing is just one of the human activities that threaten the oceans, it is among the most serious. And of all fishing methods, “trawling is the worst for marine ecology by many orders of magnitude,” says Dr. Les Watling, Professor of Oceanography at the University of Maine and an expert on benthic, or bottom-dwelling, organisms. Most trawling occurs along the sea bed, targeting such species as groundfish, shrimp, and scallops, and disturbing or destroying a great number of other species in the process. Noted oceanographer Sylvia Earle describes bottom trawling as “the subsea equivalent of collecting the entire farm when the goal is to bring in a bushel of apples.” Says Watling, “It simply sweeps up everything at the bottom, destroying a diversity of life that has existed for as long as the earth has.” Because we know so little about benthic biodiversity to begin with, some species are almost certainly being lost without our knowledge.      1 of 23