Dragnets as a concept are just patently insane. It’s like bulldozing a rainforest to get a few berries from it. It’s a complete and absolute disregard for the environment.
Anything caused by bottom trawling is too big to ignore.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Scientists have long known that bottom trawling – the practice of dragging massive nets along the seabed to catch fish – churns up carbon from the sea floor.
Now, for the first time, researchers have calculated just how much trawling releases into the atmosphere: 370m tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year – an amount, they say, that is “too big to ignore”.
“Our study is the very first to show that over half the carbon released by bottom trawling eventually escapes into the atmosphere as CO2 over the span of about 10 years, contributing to global warming,” said Atwood.
The new study, published on Thursday, found that the amount released into the air could double the annual emissions from fuel combustion of the entire global fishing fleet of 4m vessels.
Dr Enric Sala, the explorer-in-residence and executive director of Pristine Seas, said the amount of carbon released by trawling into the air, is “too big to ignore” and urged countries to include the emissions in their climate action plans.
The magnitude of trawl-induced carbon dioxide released into water in the original 2021 study – published in Nature and led by Sala – was challenged last year by other scientists, writing in the same journal.
The original article contains 698 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
370m tonnes of planet-heating carbon dioxide a year
Just to put this into perspective, the global release is 37.5 billion. Doesn’t mean this isn’t an issue but i think there are far better avenues to explore to reduce emissions.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/
I’ll have to check my notes, but I think there’s probably several good reasons to stop doing this shit
For anyone wondering the difference between 370 million tonnes and 37.5 billion tonnes, it’s about 37.5 billion tonnes.
370 million is 0.37 billion, so the difference is about 37.13 billion.
370 million tons of carbon from a single source is a considerable amount.
370 million is just under 1% of 37.5 billion. It’s obviously far from the majority but I can see it being something that should be addressed.
Oh, agreed. I just think there are better metrics we can point at other than carbon release for why bottom trawling is a terrible thing for the environment.
Gotcha. That makes total sense.
37.1 billion, but yeah
