Resumen de Ecological merits of trawling the oceans
Trawling the seabed for fish is an environmental disaster; it wrecks ecosystems, destroys fish stocks and leaves behind a marine desert. But there is growing evidence that the effect is sometimes very different, with trawling increasing fish stocks from the North Sea to the California coast. A new modeling study may for the first time have demonstrated why. Trawling clearly does remove fish, large crustaceans and shellfish, says Daniel van Denderen of the Wageningen Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies in the Netherlands. But this is a lucky break for softer, smaller species lurking in the sandy seabed, such as worms. They survive and, with fewer rivals, flourish.
