Reducing uncertainty in global carbon emission estimates from active bottom contacting fishing gears

Fishing with active bottom-contacting gears is considered one of the greatest sources of anthropogenic disturbance within marine environments with impacts ranging from biodiversity loss, habitat degradation and carbon resuspension. However, there remains strong debate over the global scale of the footprint of this activity primarily driven by uncertainties inherent in the data that underpin such estimates. One major source of uncertainty surrounds global variation in gear width estimates with previous studies applying European relationships to the global fleet, however, the appropriateness of this assumption remains untested. Equally, spatial data on the global fishing fleet has recently become available that separates bottom contacting gears from their mid-water equivalents. In this talk, we will present the latest findings from our investigations into how updated datasets in both of these areas of uncertainty have impacted estimates of the global footprint of bottom-contacting fishing gears and the implications of this for policy and management.