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1.0 TRAWLING THE BOTTOM LINE THE OPPORTUNITY TO CLOSE BOTTOM TRAWLING IN AUSTRALIA’S COMMONWEALTH
MARINE PARKS NETWORK Introduction Australia’s network of marine parks, which is the biggest in the world, covers more than half (52%) of Australia’s Commonwealth domestic waters, but not all parks are created equal. Australia’s Marine Parks Network is divided into different zoning categories, with each zone determining which activities are permitted and the level of protection provided. More than half of the Marine Parks Network allow industrial activities like industrial fishing and oil and gas mining1. This includes zoning types that allow destructive fishing by longliners and bottom trawlers, who pillage underwater wonderlands, rip up coral and indiscriminately and violently catch any animal in their path, including turtles, seals and dolphins, all within areas labelled a marine park. The Federal government has commenced a review into the majority of Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network management plans. This presents an opportunity to increase protections for ocean ecosystems and wildlife. Greenpeace Australia Pacific recommends the removal of bottom trawling from Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network as part of the statutory review process, which takes place every ten years. Our survival, and the survival of our planet, depend on the ocean. The ocean produces more oxygen than all of our forests combined, sustains communities and regulates the earth’s temperature. It’s home to wondrous wildlife and important ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests.
1
As per the Marine Protected Area User Guide definition of “industrial” https://mpa-guide.protectedplanet.net/MPA%20User%20Manual_ENG_EG_WEB_FUL L.pdf pp.14
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Bottom Trawling in Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network Bottom trawling continues to be a pervasive threat to ocean life in Australia with numerous state and Commonwealth fisheries continuing to utilise this destructive fishing method. The Australian Marine Parks Network covers Commonwealth waters starting at 5.5km and extending up to 370 kilometres from the coast. The network is divided into seven regional management areas and contains 60 marine parks. Zoning categories determine what activities are allowed in each park. Over half of the network is zoned for industrial activities, risking our most precious and threatened ocean wildlife.2 Within many of our marine parks, destructive industries are allowed to fish, trawl, dig and mine using barbaric and cruel methods, permitted under zone types. Bottom trawling is allowed in “Special Purpose (trawl)” zones, and cover 10 marine parks totalling almost 13 million hectares,3 an area almost twice the size of Tasmania. Bottom trawlers bulldoze the seafloor with weighted nets, deforesting our underwater forests and harming and killing precious wildlife as bycatch; a cruel, indiscriminate and inefficient way to fish. Ten Commonwealth marine parks currently allow bottom trawling to operate within them: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Gulf of Carpentaria Marine Park Wessel Marine Park Arafura Marine Park Oceanic Shoals Marine Park Argo-Rowley Terrace Marine Park Western Eyre Marine Park Jervis Bay Marine Park Hunter Marine Park Solitary Islands Marine Park Coral Sea Marine Park
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Substantiation that more than half of the Marine Parks Network permits industrial activity comes from a peer-reviewed systematic literature review (Phillips et al. 2025, PLOS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307324). The study found that within the Commonwealth Marine Parks Network specifically, "all zones are considered [partially protected areas, meaning areas where extractive activities are permitted], except 'Pink zones' (Preservation Zones; IUCN Ia) and 'Green Zones' (IUCN II)." In other words, every Commonwealth marine park zone type other than the network's strict no-take sanctuary and national park zones (IUCN Ia and II) permits some form of extractive industrial activity. Since no-take zones are the minority zone type across the network by area, this supports the conclusion that the majority of the network's area is zoned to permit industrial activity. 3
DCCEEW Australian Marine Parks spatial dataset (https://fed.dcceew.gov.au/datasets/erin::australian-marine-parks/explore), filtered by zone type.
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This map shows publicly available data on the presence of bottom trawling in Australian waters and the 10 Commonwealth marine parks that continue to allow bottom trawling. This map doesn’t show where trawling continues to be allowed within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Background on Bottom Trawling in Commonwealth Marine Parks The release of the film Ocean for David Attenborough’s 99th birthday reopened the discussion around whether bottom trawling is compatible with Australia’s marine parks. The independent fishing gear risk assessments commissioned when Temperate East, Coral Sea, North, North-west, and South-west Marine Parks Networks were being first established all assessed bottom trawling as incompatible with the values of Australia’s Commonwealth marine parks.4,5,6 4
Morison A.K., and McLoughlin, K., 2010. Assessment of risks that commercial fishing methods may pose to conservation values identified in the Areas for Further Assessment of the East Marine Region. Morison Aquatic Sciences. 5 Lack, M., 2010. Assessment of risks that commercial fishing methods may pose to the conservation values identified in the Areas for Further Assessment of the North and North-west Marine Regions. Shellack Pty Ltd < https://www.dcceew.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/fishing-risk-assessment.pdf> 6 Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population, and Communities, 2010. Assessment of risks that commercial fishing methods may pose to conservation values of the South-west Marine Region. Canberra, Australia.
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However, the 2018 management plans established under the previous Coalition Government chose to allow bottom trawling within almost 13 million hectares of Australia’s Commonwealth marine parks. Outside of these 2018 management plans no Commonwealth marine parks allow bottom trawling. Compared to the proposed 2013 management plans tabled in parliament by the previous ALP Government, the 2018 management plans increased the area open for trawling in the Coral Sea by over 1500% (more than 6.2 million hectares), and increased the area open for trawling in the North Region marine parks by 350% (more than 4.0 million hectares). It also created the first ever trawling zones for the North-west and South-west region marine parks.
The Impact of Bottom Trawling Globally Globally, bottom trawling is widely regarded as one of the most damaging methods of industrial fishing, both for what it catches and for what it destroys. Ecologically, its effects on the seafloor have been compared to deforestation on land: heavy trawl gear crushes, buries and exposes aquatic lifeforms that live on or near the ocean floor, sharply reducing the structural complexity of habitats that can take years or decades to develop.7 Bottom trawling gear causes severe physical damage to the seafloor, disturbing an area of ocean floor comparable in scale to the Amazon rainforest every year as nets and metal doors crush, rip up and smother everything in their path.8 Because many of these ecosystems are slow-growing and fragile, recovery is extraordinarily slow. Bycatch is one of bottom trawling's most significant impacts, occurring when non-target species are injured or killed while a small number of commercially valuable species are being targeted. Because trawl nets are dragged indiscriminately along the seafloor, they scoop up almost everything in their path rather than selecting for particular species, and much of this incidental catch including sharks, rays, turtles, seabirds and other unwanted ocean life is thrown back, often injured, dead or dying. Globally, an estimated 9.1 million tonnes of catch are discarded each year, equivalent to around 10.8% of the total global catch, and trawl fisheries are responsible for roughly 60% of this total.9 Bottom trawls alone account for around 45% of all global discards by weight (approximately 4.2 million tonnes annually) and have an average 7
Watling, L. & Norse, E.A. (1998). Disturbance of the Seabed by Mobile Fishing Gear: A Comparison to Forest Clearcutting. Conservation Biology, 12(6), 1180–1197. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-1739.1998.0120061180.x 8 National Geographic, "New footage reveals the seabed devastation caused by bottom trawling," https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/bottom-trawling-effects-seabed-ocea n 9 Gilman, E., Perez Roda, A., Huntington, T., Kennelly, S.J., Suuronen, P., Chaloupka, M. & Medley, P.A.H. (2020). Benchmarking global fisheries discards. Scientific Reports, 10, 14017. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71021-x
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discard rate of close to 22% of what they catch, though gear-specific rates can run much higher, for example shrimp trawls discard as much as 55% of their catch on average.10 These figures may still understate the true scale of the problem: using a broader definition of bycatch as catch that is either unused or unmanaged, rather than only what is physically thrown overboard, one influential study estimated that bycatch could account for around 40% of the total global marine catch across all fishing methods.11 The consequences for vulnerable species can be severe. Sharks and rays are especially susceptible to bycatch because of their slow growth, late maturity and low reproductive rates, and researchers estimate that the global abundance of oceanic sharks and rays has fallen by 71% since 1970 due to intensifying fishing pressure, including high levels of bycatch.12 This pattern holds close to home: wherever there is industrial fishing there is bycatch. In Australia, bottom trawling remains permitted across close to 13 million hectares of the Commonwealth Marine Parks Network, leaving wildlife and ecosystems within these supposedly protected waters exposed to this same damage.
Scuba Divers Holding Banner Underwater, near Jervis Marine Park, Calling to strengthen Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. Greenpeace / Harriet Spark
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Pérez Roda, M.A. (ed.), Gilman, E., Huntington, T., Kennelly, S.J., Suuronen, P., Chaloupka, M. & Medley, P. (2019). A third assessment of global marine fisheries discards. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 633. Rome, FAO. 11 Davies, R.W.D., Cripps, S.J., Nickson, A. & Porter, G. (2009). Defining and estimating global marine fisheries bycatch. Marine Policy, 33(4), 661–672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2009.01.003 12 Pacoureau, N. et al. (2021). Half a century of global decline in oceanic sharks and rays. Nature, 589, 567–571. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-03173-9
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The Economics of Ending Bottom Trawling Banning trawling in Commonwealth Marine Parks would yield significant environmental, social and economic benefits at an initial minor economic cost. A 2018 analysis by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) estimated that the 2018 Australian Marine Parks management plans displaced $4.1 million in annual fishing activity and would not likely exceed 17 potential job losses nationwide. 13 Trawling currently occurs across 10 Commonwealth Marine Parks and eight fisheries. Previous analyses indicate that removing trawling from these parks would displace only $2.6 million in annual fishing activity (Table 1), substantially less than the broader 2018 management changes. Based on this analysis, employment impacts are expected to be low, with job losses most likely to fall within a range of 0-20 jobs, and outcomes closer to zero considered significantly more likely. Under the government's 2018 fishing grants formula, assistance for fishers affected by a trawling ban was estimated to cost less than $7 million (Table 1). The limited economic impact reflects: ● the small scale and low economic value of the affected trawl fisheries; and ● the availability of government adjustment assistance for affected operators. Overall, the evidence suggests that a small amount of economic activity is maintaining a practice that has a disproportionate impact on vulnerable ocean habitats and wildlife.
The Benefits of Ocean Sanctuaries Ocean sanctuaries are a proven way to safeguard biodiversity, increase fish populations, protect ocean habitat, and support coastal communities and livelihoods. More fully and highly protected ocean sanctuaries within Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network would deliver benefits that reach well beyond the marine environment. When industrial activities, including bottom trawling, are restricted, fish populations inside a sanctuary 13
Larcombe, J & Marton, N 2018, Potential displacement of commercial fisheries by an Australian Marine Parks zoning scheme: Report on recommended management plan zoning, ABARES technical report, Canberra, January. CC BY 4.0
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grow larger and more abundant, and as numbers build up, individuals, larvae and eggs move out into surrounding waters. This process is known as the "spillover effect," which research shows can sustain or increase catches in nearby fisheries, boost fish biomass, and support the recovery of predator species, who rely on the fish for survival.14 This isn't a marginal effect: a study of Hawaii's Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument found that catches of migratory yellowfin tuna in fishing grounds next to the reserve rose by 54% once protections took hold.15 Ocean sanctuaries are also significant sources of employment, supporting work for tourism operators, tour guides, marine park rangers, environmental educators and scientific researchers alongside conservation-based livelihoods.16 In Australia, this is substantial: the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park contributes more than $6.4 billion each year to the economy and supports 64,000 full-time jobs.17 18 Additionally, the economic benefits of sanctuaries are highlighted in a 2024 global review of marine protected areas in 37 countries which found economic benefits to commercial fisheries in 25 countries and to tourism in 24 countries.19 The study reports increased fish stocks and catch volumes, as well as larger fish and larger lobsters, in areas adjacent to the marine protected areas. More fully protected and well-established sanctuaries in Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network could act as tourism powerhouses that support growing industries and jobs in regional communities while boosting fish populations and local businesses for the long term.20
14
Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy, "The Case for Marine Protected Areas," 2025. https://www.pew-bertarelli-ocean-legacy.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2025/10/the-ca se-for-marine-protected-areas 15 Strong Coast, "Spillover and The Economic Benefits of Marine Protected Areas," https://strongcoast.org/economic-benefits-marine-protected-areas/ 16 Marine Biodiversity Science Center, "Marine Protected Areas: The Economic Powerhouse Behind Ocean Conservation," http://www.marinebiodiversity.ca/marine-protected-areas-the-economic-powerhouse-behind-oc ean-conservation/ 17 Conservation Volunteers Australia, "Marine Protected Areas in Australia," https://conservationvolunteers.com.au/marine-protected-areas-in-australia/ 18 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, “Fascinating Facts about the Great Barrier Reef,” https://www2.gbrmpa.gov.au/learn/fascinating-facts-about-great-barrier-reef 19 Costello MJ. “Evidence of economic benefits from marine protected areas,” 2024, https://scientiamarina.revistas.csic.es/index.php/scientiamarina/article/view/5526 20 The Conversation, "Marine protected areas safeguard more than ecology – they bring economic benefits to fisheries and tourism," https://theconversation.com/marine-protected-areas-safeguard-more-than-ecology-they-bring-e conomic-benefits-to-fisheries-and-tourism-225337
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SV Oceania with 'Stop Trawling Marine Parks' Rail Banner, near Hunter Marine Park, NSW. Greenpeace / Bianca Vitale
Recommendations 1. Close Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network to all industrial activities: fossil fuel activities, seismic testing, mining and industrial fishing including bottom trawling. 2. Commission ABARES to provide updated estimates of commercial fishing displacement from a decision to close all Commonwealth marine parks to bottom trawling. 3. Instruct the Director of National Parks to adjust the class approvals for commercial fishing within Commonwealth marine parks to remove all bottom trawling from Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks Network. 4. Create more ocean sanctuaries: increase fully protected sanctuaries in Australia’s Marine Parks Network based on science principles. 5. Connect Australia’s Marine Parks Network to the High Seas: create seascape connectivity by linking Australian marine parks to new high seas ocean sanctuaries.
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Opportunities for further ocean protection In addition to removing bottom trawling from Commonwealth Marine Parks consideration should be given to closing the following 3 Commonwealth bottom trawl fisheries: ● North West Slope Trawl ● Western Deepwater Trawl ● East Coast Deepwater Trawl (SESSF) These are all low value marginal fisheries with minimal vessels operating that are having a disproportionate impact on Australia’s more vulnerable and poorly protected ocean habitats.
Blue Groper and Sea Tulips at Bowen Island, near Jervis Marine Park, one of the 10 Australian marine parks allowing bottom trawling. Greenpeace/ Harriet Spark
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Table 1: Previous ABARES displacement estimates for the removal of trawling from Commonwealth marine parks.
Previous ABARES displaceme nt estimates
Estimated proportion of Fishery
Estimated displaceme nt funding using 2018 formula
Marine Parks impacted
South-we st
Commonweal th Great Australian Bight Trawl (SESSF)
None4
0%
0
Western Eyre
North-we st
Commonweal th North West Slope Trawl
Less than $83,0004,21
~7%
Less than $0.3 million
Argo-Rowley Terrace
North
NT Demersal Trawl
Less than $170,0004,22
~1%
Less than $0.5 million
Wessel, Arafura
North
Commonweal th Northern Prawn Trawl
$1.1 million
~1-2%
Less than $2.7 million
Gulf of Carpentaria, Wessel, Arafura
North
QLD Gulf of Carpentaria Development al Finfish Trawl
Less than $4,00023
~0.1%
Less than $10,000
Gulf of Carpentaria
Less than $400,00024
~0.4%
Less than $1.0 million
Coral Sea
Region Fishery
Coral Sea
QLD East Coast Otter
4
21
The displacement estimate for this fishery was confidential. However, the total displacement for all Commonwealth confidential fisheries was $82,100. 22 The displacement estimate for this fishery was confidential. However, the total displacement for all Northern Territory confidential fisheries was $165,000. 23 ABARES 2011, Interim estimates of potential catch and gross value of production impacts of draft marine reserves in the North Marine Region, ABARES report to client prepared for the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Canberra, November.
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Trawl
Temperat e East
Commonweal th SESSF Trawl
$0.5 million25
~0.7%
Less than $1.3 million
Jervis
Temperat e East
NSW Ocean Trawl
$250,000 to $300,0009
~1-2%
Less than $0.8 million
Hunter, Solitary Islands
Less than $2.6 million
Total
Less than $6.3 million
24
ABARES 2012, Interim estimates of potential catch and gross value of production impacts of the proposed marine reserve in the Coral Sea, ABARES report to client prepared for the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Canberra, February. 25 ABARES 2012, Interim estimates of potential catch and gross value of production impacts of proposed marine reserves in the Temperate East Marine Region, ABARES report to client prepared for the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Canberra, February.
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