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Life Sciences Commons

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Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Edith Cowan University

2021

Bottom trawling

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Evidence Of Large Increases In Sedimentation Rates Due To Fish Trawling In Submarine Canyons Of The Gulf Of Palermo (Sw Mediterranean), Sarah Paradis, Claudio Lo Iacono, Pere Masqué, Pere Puig, Albert Palanques, Tommaso Russo, The Island Cruise Tem Jan 2021

Evidence Of Large Increases In Sedimentation Rates Due To Fish Trawling In Submarine Canyons Of The Gulf Of Palermo (Sw Mediterranean), Sarah Paradis, Claudio Lo Iacono, Pere Masqué, Pere Puig, Albert Palanques, Tommaso Russo, The Island Cruise Tem

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Bottom trawling in submarine canyons can affect their natural sedimentation rates, but studies addressing this issue are still scarce. In the Gulf of Palermo (SW Mediterranean), bottom trawling occurs on the slope around Oreto, Arenella and Eleuterio canyons. Analyses of excess 210Pb concentrations and grain size fractions in sediment cores from their canyon axes revealed that sedimentation rates and silt contents increased in all canyons in the 1980s, due to the expansion of more powerful trawlers ( > 500 HP) to deeper fishing grounds. In Eleuterio and Arenella canyons, sedimentation rates increased by an order of magnitude (0.1-1.4 cm·yr-1), whereas they …


Persistence Of Biogeochemical Alterations Of Deep-Sea Sediments By Bottom Trawling, S. Paradis, M. Goñi, Pere Masqué, R. Durán, M. Arjona-Camas, A. Palanques, P. Puig Jan 2021

Persistence Of Biogeochemical Alterations Of Deep-Sea Sediments By Bottom Trawling, S. Paradis, M. Goñi, Pere Masqué, R. Durán, M. Arjona-Camas, A. Palanques, P. Puig

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Bottom trawling grounds have been expanding to deeper areas of the oceans since the mid-XXth century, and mitigating strategies aimed to protect fish stocks, such as temporal trawling closures, have recently been implemented. Here we investigated the biogeochemical properties of sediment from a deep-sea trawling ground in Palamós Canyon (NW Mediterranean) to assess the effects of a 2-months trawling closure in the recovery of sedimentary organic matter. In comparison to untrawled areas, the continuous erosion and sediment mixing in trawling grounds led to coarser reworked sediments impoverished in organic carbon (∼30% loss) and promoted the degradation of labile compounds (52–70% …