OPINION | Rosa Más, biologist at Rebeldes Indignadas.
The European Union is falling short and late in its claim to cut the number of days of trawling in the Mediterranean by 80%, in light of reports that show the damage that fishing causes to aquatic species and ecosystems, as well as its effect on climate change. There is no such thing as “sustainable” fishing in Europe; any other claim must be denounced as greenwashing. The Spanish government’s blocking of this measure, allying itself with the Italian far right, is unacceptable, as is the EU’s concession, neutralising the demand for at least a year.
Trawling destroys 1.500 billion hectares (or football fields) of seabed every year, according to the study by Watling and Norse. The equivalent of half of Africa and 150 times more than the surface area deforested on land every year. Like deforestation, this practice releases, first into the sea and then into the atmosphere, the CO2 sedimented on the seabed and in its forms of life, in quantities equivalent to those emitted by global aviation, according to the studies by Sala et al 2021 and Atwood et al 2024. In addition, it massively destroys and contributes to the mass extinction of marine species, the most endangered, with 85% of populations wiped out and more than 3.000 species of fish on the brink of extinction. Trawling devastates entire ecosystems, including the much-threatened corals, which in turn host thousands of other species.
Nets the size of cathedrals ravage everything in their path, of which at least 40% is discarded already dead, as “accidental” deaths, with total impunity and with 30% being illegal and phantom fishing, under the secrecy of the distance, immensity and deregulation of the oceans, something that would be unthinkable on land. Imagine nets the size of cathedrals ravaging everything in their path in the African savannah or in any national park in the Spanish State. Because, in effect, this activity of mass destruction is permitted in almost all marine protected areas.
Every year, industrial fishing kills more than 3 trillion fish, extremely sentient and intelligent beings that suffer an atrocious death: torn apart, drowned, crushed. And 40%, more than a trillion, for nothing, only to be discarded later. It is equivalent to exterminating the entire humanity, some 8.000 billion, every day. All this carried out by a ubiquitous fleet of more than 4 million killing machines (compared to just over 20.000 commercial aircraft), of which 75% are untracked. A fleet that ravages more than 55% of the oceans (an area four times larger than the total of global agriculture), that emits huge amounts of CO2 and that is one of the largest sources of human slavery and organized crime in the world.
Trawling has a particular impact on the very sensitive coastal ecosystems, which are essential for regulating the Earth's climate and which are home to a higher density of marine life than those on the high seas, and are also the breeding ground for thousands of species. According to the study by McLeod et al. 2011, seagrass meadows, as well as other coastal ecosystems such as marshes and mangroves, absorb three times more CO2 than tropical forests and are home to hundreds of thousands of species. Techniques such as trawling ravage the seabed, destroying the fragile ecosystem made up of corals and anemones. Trawling is one of the causes of the regression of the seagrass meadows of the Posidonia oceanica algae, habitat of many animals and which protect the integrity of the beaches.
Furthermore, as Lebreton et al.'s 2022 studies state, up to 86% of plastics in the oceans come from fishing and end up in the human bloodstream, after passing through the entire marine food chain, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of deaths of large turtles, dolphins, whales, sharks and other animals caused by discarded fishing gear every year.
For all these reasons, it can be said, without any doubt, that fishing, especially industrial fishing, and especially trawling, is the most devastating industry that humans have ever developed. As we said and as we show in the report Save the Oceans on Your Plate, this devastating activity is permitted in almost all of the protected areas of the European Union, including Spain.
We forget too often that all of this is happening in the midst of an exponential acceleration of an ecological-climatic crisis and the overcoming of planetary boundaries that represents a threat of extinction of the human species and millions of other species in this century, as recognized by countless institutional reports. Industrial fishing is a fundamental driver of this threat, about which there are more and more studies warning of having dead oceans by mid-century and, with it, a lifeless planet, since the oceans are the lungs of the planet and the main solution to climate change along with forests, threatened by the same issue: the animal exploitation food industry.
Therefore, the European regulation limiting the number of days of trawling in the Mediterranean, which is certainly very welcome, comes late and falls short: on the one hand, it does not prevent trawling in numerous protected areas, demonstrating the double standards and fallacy of Green Europe, and the farce of “sustainable exploitation”, whose only interest is to sustain devastating economic activities, to be able to continue massively destroying marine life; on the other hand, and due to all the above, it is urgent to stop this activity as a whole, as well as livestock, poultry and aquaculture. Specifically, aquaculture consumes a large part of fishing, so, far from solving the problems of this, it aggravates them and adds devastating impacts on ecosystems and human health, as well as the extreme abuse of more than a billion sentient beings per year, as we also mention in the aforementioned report.
And finally, as always, the fundamental issue is being evaded: the urgent transition to plant-based diets, which is defended by consensus science as the most urgent measure to be taken in the face of the climate-ecological crisis, as the famous scientist Johan Rockström recently stated; as the ten most prestigious climate scientists have recently reiterated in the conclusions of their report on The State of the Climate in 2024, and as the IPCC also states, considering the vegan diet as having three times more impact than the Mediterranean diet in tackling the crisis.
Yes, we must help and subsidize fishing communities, but not to continue this devastating activity, but rather for the urgent and unavoidable, but criminally silenced, food transition to plant-based diets.
It is therefore very serious that, in everything that has to do with food, the supposed left-wing government of the Spanish State, one of the few remaining of its kind, behaves like an extreme right-wing government, and that it has allied itself with said extreme right in Italy, with whom it has managed to block the application of European regulations for at least a year, which in turn demonstrates how little seriously the EU takes the protection of the sea.
According to various media reports, “Spanish, Italian and French fishermen fishing in the Mediterranean describe the European Commission’s (EC) proposal to cut fishing days ahead of the meeting of the Council on Total Allowable Catches (TAC) and quotas to be held in Brussels starting next Monday, December 9, as a “declaration of war.”
In the case of Spain, the proposal aims to reduce the number of days the trawler fleet spends fishing in the Mediterranean by 79%, which would mean reducing the current average of 130 days a year to just 27 days. In addition, they also aim to reduce the catch limits for red shrimp by 30% to 551 tonnes a year. Measures that, for the sector, “would mean the disappearance of the 556 trawler fleet vessels on the Mediterranean coast and the destruction of 17.000 jobs.”
In the same article, we can read the following sentence: “Fishermen are great protectors of environmental balance.” Such a bizarre statement can only be described as an exercise in intolerable cynicism and criminal greenwashing. In this sense, it is necessary to clarify that all fishing is destructive, not just trawling, not just industrial fishing. There is no sustainable fishing in Europe and we insist that any other statement must be denounced as an act of greenwashing.
On the other hand, vessels engaged in trawling cause damage as a result of the very act of sailing: fuel, plastics and organic waste dumped into the sea without any type of purification, as well as collisions with cetaceans. These are damages that must be added to those derived from the trawling activity.
For all these reasons, we at Rebeldes Indignadas demand that the Spanish Government cease its intolerable defence of this industry, and that the European Union stand firm on the measure, which should only be seen as a first step, that it subsidise the unavoidable transition to plant-based diets, and that it immediately cease the denialism and silence surrounding this measure, which is the most urgent in the face of the greatest crisis in history.