Learn more: Bottom trawling gear

Bottom trawls have a footrope (the bottom lip of the net) that can span over 150 feet in width and can be lined with heavy rollers or rockhoppers that look like old tires and measure more than 30 inches in diameter. The larger trawls can drag over a half-acre swath with each pass. The damage … Read more

Learn more: Deep-sea corals and sponges

Deep-sea corals   and sponges , some of the oldest animals on Earth, grow at the rate of just a few millimeters each year and live for thousands of years. In recent years, NOAA and other scientific organizations worldwide have discovered that the majority of the coral species found in the world’s oceans live in deep … Read more

Learn more: The Seafloor

Not so long ago, many scientists assumed the ocean floor was a vast plain, lifeless and without currents. In the 1960s, scientists using early submersibles discovered that the ocean bottom is made up of familiar landscape features including great plains, deep canyons, mountain ridges and large seafloor hills, known as seamounts. Like land-based environments, life … Read more

Bottom Trawling: What Oceana Does

Oceana carries out campaigns to research and classify marine habitats in the Bay of Biscay, Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Once the data is analysed, Oceana scientists compile a formal protection proposal for the areas whose characteristics require it and measures are established to carry out and/or request the recuperation of the degraded environments.  Reports … Read more

European trawlers are destroying the oceans

Nearly 100,000 vessels make up the European Union fishing fleet. This includes boats that fish both in EU waters (the domestic fleet), in the waters of other countries and in international waters (the deep-sea fleet). In addition, there is an unknown number of vessels belonging to other European countries that are not members of the … Read more

The seamounts of the Gorringe Bank

A seamount is a regarded as a geological elevation that reaches a minimum of 1,000 metres in height and can consist of very different physical, geological and chemical properties. Therefore, seamounts can only exist where there are sea beds more than one kilometre deep, or, which is one and the same thing, over 60%-62% of … Read more

Oceana urges the Balearic Government to prohibit trawling on the continental shelf

Oceana urges the Balearic government to prohibit bottom trawling on the continental shelf or at less than 150 meters depth. The international marine conservation organisation sent island authorities a series of comments on the new Fishing Law of the Balearic Islands that is currently being reviewed. In its analysis, Oceana also disagrees with the reduction … Read more

Overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction are threatening European Seas

Oceana denounces the severe deterioration of Europe’s oceans and seas and calls for immediate measures to halt the collapse of fish resources, the destruction of marine habitats and the pollution affecting its waters. On World Environment Day (5 June) and World Oceans Day (8 June), Oceana points out that European seas are among the most … Read more