The use bottom trawling fishing technology is a world wide practice that impacts most of the continental shelf around the world.  This type of fishing technology is used for harvesting bottom or near bottom dwelling organisms such as scallops, shrimp, sea cumbers, flat fish and some near bottom species of fish.  In the process, massive destruction occurs on the bottom with large amounts by-catch and hugh amounts of suspended solids put into the water column.  The amounts of suspended solids pollution in the ocean from bottom trawling activity makes it the largest source of man made suspended solids in the ocean and these solids restrict light levels, impacting kelp, transport persistent organic pollutants (POP) into the food chain, add to hypoxia events and “dead zone” size and harmful algae blooms (HAB) by putting nutrients back into the algae bloom. 

The purpose of this site is to explore the impacts of these suspended solids as they drift with the currents on other ecosystems and oceanic processes.   This effort is being supported by United Anglers of Southern California. 

The report of the impacts can be found on the Links to Doc’s page.