Mitigating seafloor disturbance of bottom trawl fisheries for North Sea sole Solea solea by replacing mechanical with electrical stimulation Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Ecosystem effects of bottom trawl fisheries are of major concern. Although it is prohibited to catch fish using electricity in European Union waters, a number of beam trawlers obtained a derogation and switched to pulse trawling to explore the potential to reduce impacts. Here we analyse whether using electrical rather than mechanical stimulation results in an overall reduction in physical disturbance of the seafloor in the beam-trawl fishery ...