At the age of 99, the documentary film-maker David Attenborough has achieved his greatest triumph. With a single film clip, he has signed the death warrant for one of the world’s most destructive industries: bottom trawling. The companies and countries that do it will go down fighting and it will take time, but they will go down.
Bottom trawling – a fishing method that involves dragging large nets along the sea floor – could be banned across more vulnerable areas of English seas. The government is committed to protecting UK oceans and has outlined plans to ban the destructive practice in more Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The measures would help protect rare marine animals, as well as the delicate sea-beds on which they rely, from indiscriminate and potentially irreversible damage.
Chile's Under secretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture, SUBPESCA, and Oceana Chile jointly announced the freezing of the fishing footprint for the common hake and demersal crustacean fisheries. This means that 98% of Chile's exclusive economic zone, EEZ, will be protected from bottom trawling.