Let us consider a company that generates an annual turnover of 4.5 billion euros, whilst receiving 1.3 billion euros in state subsidies - and which incurs net costs of up to 10.8 billion euros, primarily due to social costs and immense quantities of CO2.
Responsible economists would categorise this as economic insanity and strongly advise against it. Yet this is precisely what is occurring, according to the first study to measure the total economic costs of bottom trawling in European waters, which has just been published. National Geographic Pristine Seas, led by marine scientist Kat Millage as lead author, scrutinised the available data and uncovered astonishing findings.
To arrive at their results, the researchers analysed bottom trawling in European waters between 2016 and 2021, utilizing data from Global Fishing Watch, among other sources. Annually, bottom trawling by the EU, Great Britain, Norway, and Iceland generates a turnover of 4.5 billion euros, heavily subsidised by the respective nations with an annual sum of 1.3 billion euros - nearly one-third. This almost equates to the value of the jobs created by this sector. One of the final official acts of the German environment minister Cem Özdemir in January 2025 was to release subsidies of 20 million euros for German bottom trawling for the year 2025. For approximately 180 German bottom trawler fishers, this equates to around 111,000 euros per fisher (over 9,000 euros per month).
At the same time, European bottom trawling yields a negligible share of only about 2% of the animal protein consumed in Europe. The cost of this, alongside all other aspects, is a bycatch rate of between 70% and 90%, which is discarded back overboard dying or dead.
The environmental damage is otherwise immense: fishers also operate within marine protected areas. The study determines that 60% of all European protected areas (Marine Protected Areas, MPAs) are literally turned upside down by fishers, as the seabed is permanently destroyed wherever a bottom trawl has been dragged. European taxpayers are ultimately financing the destruction of their own marine protected areas. Furthermore, the CO2 stored in the seabed is released in gigantic quantities, with half of it entering the atmosphere within 9 years. Consequently, this fishery emits (on a global scale) the same quantity of CO2 as global aviation.
And here it is again: the juxtaposition of business profit versus climate change. Short-term, subsidised profit-seeking causes far higher long-term costs through environmental destruction and its associated consequences. Calculated over the long term, nature conservation is consistently the most cost-effective strategy.
We consider our demand for a general ban on bottom trawling to be vindicated by this study. A fishery that is only sustained by subsidies, without which it would be unprofitable, and which is also extremely damaging to our oceans and accelerates climate change, must be terminated without replacement. A presumably sufficient measure would be the outright abolition of these subsidies, if a tax on the damaging fish or a ban on the fishing method as a whole is not under consideration.
Sources:
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023.1125137;
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03371-z
