Beam Trawling
What is beam trawling?
Beam trawling is one of the most destructive forms of bottom trawling, in which a large net attached to a heavy metal beam is dragged across the sea bed behind a boat, digging into and ploughing up the ground. The beam, which can be up to 12m long, keeps the net open horizontally while metal frames at each end keep it open vertically. Beam trawlers tow two nets, one each side of the vessel. On larger boats, several tons of 'tickler' chains can be used ahead of the ground rope to raise fish which may otherwise be crushed by the beam.
The target species are usually shrimp or bottom-dewelling flat-Fish such as plaice and sole, but its indiscriminate nature means that hundreds of other species with no commercial value are killed in the process. In the fishing industry these unwanted species are known by the deliberately inoffensive term 'bycatch'.
The true cost of beam trawling
Decades of overfishing in the pelagic zone (the mid-water areas of the sea where tuna, mackerel, herring and sea-bass used to be plentiful) has led to a dramatic growth in all forms of bottom-trawling. There are now estimated to be close to 300 beam-trawlers of various sizes in operation around the world. According to Daily Telegraph environment correspondent Charles Clover, "the global fishing fleet is estimated to be two and a half times greater than needed to catch what the ocean can sustainably produce," and that modern industrial fishing has turned our seas into "a vast killing field filled with technologically sophisticated deep-ocean fleets from the First World devastating the waters of the Third."
