Ocean bottom trawling is not just a bit fishy, it’s proper disgusting.
When the amount of bycatch that gets thrown back dead every year is the animal biomass of 9 billion cats 😿😿😿😿😿😿😿😿😿*, it should be an outrage.
The ratio of dead discarded bycatch to the catch sold is as much as 5:1. Which makes it the most economically inefficient, environmentally reckless and poorly designed system in history.
But it often gets overlooked because it goes on ‘beneath the surface’ – in all the places that those seeking to push back on sustainability disclosure would rather have people not poking their noses into. Because if they did, it would be hard to hold their noses with what they find.
Ending this practice and redesigning how the fishing industry works provides a pretty compelling business case for sustainability and better ‘Design for Planet‘. So it is important that the UK is calling for a wider ban on ocean trawling at the UN Ocean Conference today.
And the systemic shifts and redesign of the industry only start here.
*There are only c.1billion cats in the world, so this volume would be the equivalent of their ‘collateral damage’ death being staged every 5-6 weeks, every year (thanks to Will Oulton for the visual aesthetic).
And while I do apologise for the gruesome imagery, the point is to illustrate the extent of what we are looking away from by ignoring supply chain sustainability, due diligence, disclosure, etc…