Trawl impacts on the relative status of biotic communities of seabed sedimentary habitats in 24 regions worldwide.

Bottom trawling is widespread globally and impacts seabed habitats. However, risks from trawling remain unquantified at large scales in most regions. We address these issues by synthesizing evidence on the impacts of different trawl-gear types, seabed recovery rates, and spatial distributions of trawling intensity in a quantitative indicator of biotic status (relative amount of pretrawling biota) for sedimentary habitats, where most bottom-trawling occurs, in 24 regions worldwide. Regional average status relative to an untrawled state (=1) was high (>0.9) in 15 regions, but <0.7 in three (European) regions and only 0.25 in the Adriatic Sea. Across all regions, 66% of seabed area was not trawled (status = 1), 1.5% was depleted (status = 0), and 93% had status > 0.8. These assessments are first order, based on parameters estimated with uncertainty from meta-analyses; we recommend regional analyses to refine parameters for local specificity. Nevertheless, our results are sufficiently robust to highlight regions needing more effective management to reduce exploitation and improve stock sustainability and seabed environmental status-while also showing seabed status was high (>0.95) in regions where catches of trawled fish stocks meet accepted benchmarks for sustainable exploitation, demonstrating that environmental benefits accrue from effective fisheries management. Furthermore, regional seabed status was related to the proportional area swept by trawling, enabling preliminary predictions of regional status when only the total amount of trawling is known. This research advances seascape-scale understanding of trawl impacts in regions around the world, enables quantitative assessment of sustainability risks, and facilitates implementation of an ecosystem approach to trawl fisheries management globally.

Bottom trawl fishing footprints on the world's continental shelves.

Bottom trawlers land around 19 million tons of fish and invertebrates annually, almost one-quarter of wild marine landings. The extent of bottom trawling footprint (seabed area trawled at least once in a specified region and time period) is often contested but poorly described. We quantify footprints using high-resolution satellite vessel monitoring system (VMS) and logbook data on 24 continental shelves and slopes to 1,000-m depth over at least 2 years. Trawling footprint varied markedly among regions: from <10% of seabed area in Australian and New Zealand waters, the Aleutian Islands, East Bering Sea, South Chile, and Gulf of Alaska to >50% in some European seas. Overall, 14% of the 7.8 million-km2 study area was trawled, and 86% was not trawled. Trawling activity was aggregated; the most intensively trawled areas accounting for 90% of activity comprised 77% of footprint on average. Regional swept area ratio (SAR; ratio of total swept area trawled annually to total area of region, a metric of trawling intensity) and footprint area were related, providing an approach to estimate regional trawling footprints when high-resolution spatial data are unavailable. If SAR was ≤0.1, as in 8 of 24 regions, there was >95% probability that >90% of seabed was not trawled. If SAR was 7.9, equal to the highest SAR recorded, there was >95% probability that >70% of seabed was trawled. Footprints were smaller and SAR was ≤0.25 in regions where fishing rates consistently met international sustainability benchmarks for fish stocks, implying collateral environmental benefits from sustainable fishing.

Global analysis of depletion and recovery of seabed biota after bottom trawling disturbance.

Bottom trawling is the most widespread human activity affecting seabed habitats. Here, we collate all available data for experimental and comparative studies of trawling impacts on whole communities of seabed macroinvertebrates on sedimentary habitats and develop widely applicable methods to estimate depletion and recovery rates of biota after trawling. Depletion of biota and trawl penetration into the seabed are highly correlated. Otter trawls caused the least depletion, removing 6% of biota per pass and penetrating the seabed on average down to 2.4 cm, whereas hydraulic dredges caused the most depletion, removing 41% of biota and penetrating the seabed on average 16.1 cm. Median recovery times posttrawling (from 50 to 95% of unimpacted biomass) ranged between 1.9 and 6.4 y. By accounting for the effects of penetration depth, environmental variation, and uncertainty, the models explained much of the variability of depletion and recovery estimates from single studies. Coupled with large-scale, high-resolution maps of trawling frequency and habitat, our estimates of depletion and recovery rates enable the assessment of trawling impacts on unprecedented spatial scales.

Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences.

Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates. Randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling were used by just 23% of intervention studies in biodiversity conservation, and 36% of intervention studies in social science. We demonstrate, through pairwise within-study comparisons across 49 environmental datasets, that these types of designs usually give less biased estimates than simpler observational designs. We propose a model-based approach to combine study estimates that may suffer from different levels of study design bias, discuss the implications for evidence synthesis, and how to facilitate the use of more credible study designs.