Greenpeace Thwarts Bottom Trawlers Drops Boulders Onto Seabed

Using a specially equipped barge, our team is placing a number of large boulders on the seafloor to act as obstacles stopping fishermen from ploughing up the rare habitats of maerl beds and bubble reefs. Bubble reefs (underwater structures created by gas seepage) are amazing habitats of great scientific interest that have only recently been discovered in Sweden. But despite the existence of these vulnerable habitats bottom trawling, one of most destructive forms of fishing, is common throughout the area.

Bottom trawlers drag giant weighted nets along the ocean floor, ripping up or scooping out whatever they encounter, including ancient coral forests, gardens of anemones and entire fields of sea sponges. Unwanted and undersized fish hauled up by bottom trawlers are thrown back dead or dying -- in some areas, as many as four pounds of fish are discarded for every one pound brought to market.