Understanding the Drivers Behind Why People Start, Stay in, and Stop Bottom Trawling: Insights for Policymakers

Our research analyses people's motivations in the bottom trawling industry as a crucial step toward mitigating its impacts. Bottom trawling, which involves dragging a weighted net across the seabed, captures and damages virtually all organisms in its path. This practice has negatively impacted fishers by diminishing food security, intensifying competition for artisanal and small-scale fishers, escalating human rights violations, and triggering social and violent conflicts. While the obvious solution seems to be to limit bottom trawling, decision-makers are often challenged by conflicting economic, social, and environmental imperatives.

Focusing on India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, where bottom trawling is prominent, we investigated why trawling started, stayed, and stopped, providing insights to support decision-makers. We conducted a novel systematic literature review incorporating both peer-reviewed and grey literature sources to capture these insights. Few articles directly examined fishers’ motivations in the bottom trawl industry; instead, relevant details were scattered across studies, often as brief mentions within broader topics. These snippets contributed to our dataset.

Our analysis indicates that the fishery started bottom trawling primarily because of economic factors, such as the provision of subsidies and the introduction of technology. The industry stayed with trawling for economic and social reasons, including subsidies, the demand for bottom trawl products, and illegal fishing. The trawl industry only stopped trawling when forced by social pressures, such as the effective implementation of fisheries regulations.

Our review reveals ambiguity about the scale of trawling, unclear terminology for trawl gear, and a lack of clarity about the actors involved in the industry.  All are critical challenges when crafting policy. Managing a fishery often involves managing people, which requires understanding human behaviour influenced by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Recognising and addressing these results will be crucial in determining how best to constrain bottom trawling effectively.