71% of taxa (53% of catches) are harvested with habitat-destructive gear, and many provide important ecosystem functions including habitat, filtration, and grazing.
A historical moment for the life of the oceans is at hand as the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament wrangles with proposed legislation to phase out the use of deep-sea-bottom trawls and other destructive fishing gear in the Northeast Atlantic.
Only the portion of the industry that wants to cater to consumers with consciences has changed; the rest of the industry continues to use pesticides, or unfair trade, or destructive fishing gear – and can sell those products at lower prices to people who don't feel bad about buying them.
First, the removal of destructive fishing gear from the areas outside the permitted fishing areas should promote improved habitat quality [29], while also reducing bycatch [30].
However, since 1995 the end to leasing and resultant free access in flowing rivers has encouraged overfishing and locally powerful people and fishers have been able to gain control over section of river and have invested more heavily in boats and destructive fishing gears such as fish aggregating devices (FADs), (Mustafa, 2009).
They offered a familiar list of strategies — restricting destructive types of fishing gear, setting quotas for individual fishermen, establishing large "no-take" zones to allow species to breed and multiply.
The large quantities of undersized and non-commercial species thrown overboard and the perceived destructive nature of the trawl gear on fishing grounds led to further concerns among fishers of inshore areas such as the Firth of Clyde.
A persisting management and regulatory challenge in the area is the continued use of illegal fishing gears that are deemed destructive by either their manner of operation or technical design.
There may also be a number of positive benefits; the macroalgal farms effectively acting as no-take zones for mobile gear fisheries and thus enhancing less destructive static gear fisheries within the cultivation zone and providing spill over benefits to adjacent waters [ 59].
