Greece Leads the Charge Against Destructive Bottom Trawling

Greece has vowed to go the archetypal state successful Europe to prohibition bottommost trawling successful each of its Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Credit: Dimitra Damian/ Greek Reporter

Greece is starring Europe successful banning bottommost trawling, says a caller survey published successful National Geographic.

Bottom trawling is simply a sportfishing signifier that involves dragging heavy, weighted nets crossed the water floor, and has agelong been a taxable of aggravated biology scrutiny.

While it is an businesslike mode to seizure precocious volumes of seafood, its collateral harm to marine ecosystems and the clime has precocious prompted a important displacement successful European policy.

The study has quantified the dense terms nine pays for this practice. The probe reveals that bottommost trawling successful European waters incurs costs of up to €16 cardinal annually.

A superior operator of this staggering fig is the clime impact. By disturbing the seabed, trawling releases c sequestered successful marine sediments, thereby exacerbating global warming. These economical and biology costs underscore the urgent request for a modulation toward much sustainable sportfishing methods.

Greece to enforce a implicit prohibition connected bottommost trawling

In a proactive effect to these ecological challenges, Greece made headlines successful April 2024 by announcing a large argumentation shift. During the “Our Ocean” league held successful Athens, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that Greece would go the archetypal state successful Europe to prohibition bottommost trawling successful each of its Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

This ambitious inaugural is acceptable to beryllium implemented successful stages: bottommost trawling volition beryllium prohibited successful the nation’s 3 existing nationalist marine parks by 2026, with a implicit prohibition crossed each Greek MPAs to travel by 2030.

To guarantee the effectiveness of this policy, the Greek authorities has committed €780 cardinal to protecting its unsocial marine ecosystems, which see captious habitats for endangered taxon specified arsenic the Mediterranean monk seal and assorted cetaceans. Furthermore, the program includes deploying precocious surveillance technology, specified arsenic drones, to enforce the caller regulations.

The Greek determination has been wide praised by conservationists, who presumption it arsenic a imaginable “domino effect” for the remainder of the European Union. By taking this decisive step, Greece is signaling a cardinal alteration successful however coastal nations negociate their narration with the ocean—moving distant from extractive practices that travel astatine a precocious outgo to the satellite and toward a exemplary that prioritizes semipermanent ecological and economical health.

Safequarding Greek Seas

In effect to the study, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said:

“By moving to signifier retired bottommost trawling crossed each Greek Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), Greece is taking decisive enactment to reconstruct marine ecosystems, enactment sustainable fisheries and safeguard the semipermanent wellness of our seas. It is the astir effectual mode to instrumentality the 2 large Marine Parks successful the Aegean and Ionian Seas, bringing Greece person to exceeding the 30×30 target.”

“It would correspond a transformative measurement successful safeguarding Posidonia seagrass beds, and different susceptible habitats, heighten c sequestration, enactment the accelerated betterment of food stocks, and make affirmative spillover effects into surrounding waters. In doing so, it would service some biodiversity conservation and the semipermanent interests of fishers and section communities, strengthening the resilience and sustainability of the bluish system successful Greece’s coastal regions.”

The probe follows galvanizing footage of bottommost trawling successful the documentary OCEAN by David Attenborough and comes arsenic conservation groups summation unit connected European governments to prohibition bottommost trawling. So far, lone Greece and Sweden person banned bottommost trawling successful MPAs.