b'An alternative is long lining for snapper, Feature a more selective, less damaging fishing technique that delivers higher quality fish.Photo creditAlex StammersA new video has emerged showing the same disturbing scene weve seen before, of hundreds of lifeless snapper drifting in the sea. These mass mortalities are no accident, they are likely a result of a bottom trawler dumping unwanted catch overboard.W hats happeningIn 1901, The New ZealandWHATS SO BAD ABOUT beneath theTimes published a warning aboutBOTTOM TRAWLING?surface is justthe impacts of bottom trawlingIf youre a seasoned salty seadog it as alarming.and called on the governmentshouldnt come as a surprise that Year afterto intervene. More than 125habitat availability, water quality year, heavilyyears later we are still havingand the abundance and diversity weighted netsthe same conversations, withof marine life has declined in are draggedlittle meaningful intervention. various areas across the country. across the seafloor crushingWorse still, the governmentThese elements determine what marine life, destroying importantis proposing changes thatscientists call the productivity of an habitats, and creating sizablewould further entrench bottomecosystem, its ability to sustain life.waste. Bottom trawling is nowtrawling as business as usual,Bottom trawling has a well-recognised as one of the threeallowing more dead fish to bedocumented and significant highest ranking man-made threatsdumped and wasted at sea. impact on this productivity. Heavy to New Zealand marine habitats. If we are serious about restoringgear dragged across the seafloor Despite this, bottom trawlingour coastal fisheries, we mustflattens and destroys habitats.remains the dominant way wetransition away from bottomThe seafloor, known as the commercially harvest fish. In thetrawling, for the benefit ofbenthic environment, acts as a 202324 fishing year, 69 percent ofour oceans, our communities,life-support system for the marine all fish caught commercially in Newand future generations. ecosystem. When its damaged, fish Zealand were caught by trawlers. and marine life move elsewhere.40FISHING IN GODZONE MAGAZINE'