Jean-François Julliard

05 October 2000

“Bottom trawling is a “crime” hidden away from public view. A strange and fascinating biodiversity is destroyed before it is even known. It embodies the worse in terms of destruction of marine ecosystems. In less than 30 years, the stocks of some species have been fished almost to exhaustion and all the problems of the fishing industry can be found in deep-sea fishing: overcapacity, concentration in the hands of a few shipowners, failure to enforce scientific advice, aggressive lobbying by the industry and complicity of the political world. If we are serious about saving our oceans, we must put an end to this destructive practice.”