A bottom trawler scours the ocean floor. (Photo: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios)
For the first time ever, the full destructive nature of bottom trawling is on display. Filmed for the feature-length documentary Ocean with David Attenborough, it’s a harrowing look at this industrial fishing practice that happens daily around the globe. While bottom trawling is often cited as environmentally damaging, this is the first time the public will see the havoc it wreaks.
Bottom trawling involves dragging heavy, weighted nets across the ocean floor. Advocates tout it as an efficient way to catch a large quantity of fish and shellfish for our growing global population. However, Attenborough reveals that trawlers are almost always looking for a single species—often cod, haddock, or halibut—and “almost three-quarters of a trawler’s catch will be thrown away.” As the acclaimed naturalist says, “It’s hard to imagine a more wasteful way to catch fish.”
With bottom trawling happening on a daily basis, covering an area the size of the Amazon rainforest every year, it’s hard to watch. The camera’s close-up view shows marine life desperately trying to escape the net, as it sucks up everything on the ocean floor. For the filmmakers, capturing the destruction was distressing, but when they couldn’t find any existing clear footage of trawling, they knew they had a responsibility to the public to show the truth. So, they obtained permission to mount cameras on commercial trawling nets.
“It’s one of the most important things I’ve ever done in my career,” says the film’s director, Keith Scholey. They have now made their footage of trawling available to scientists so that “no one ever has to [film] it again.”
For Dr. Enric Sala, National Geographic Pristine Seas founder and the film’s executive producer, the visuals were even more powerful than he expected. “For the first time, people can see the destruction of bottom trawling unfold in front of their eyes—the heavy nets dragging across the Ocean’s precious floor and killing everything in their wake. I hope the film makes people all over the world fall in love with the Ocean and inspires them to protect it.”
Ocean with David Attenborough will premiere on National Geographic on Saturday, June 7, and be available to stream globally the next day, World Oceans Day, on Disney+ and Hulu.
In Ocean with David Attenborough filmmakers have captured the full destruction of bottom trawling for the first time.
An area the size of the Amazon rainforest is trawled annually, with many locations trawled repeatedly.
An aerial view of the impacts of bottom trawling on the ocean floor. (Photo: Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios)