A new pioneering study estimates that around 50 per cent of the sediment carbon released as carbon dioxide by trawling and dredging activity will end up in the atmosphere.
Independent scientists say the latest paper Frontiers in Marine Science by Attwood et al, represents an urgent and important step forward in our understanding of the risks fishing activities pose to the security of ocean carbon stores.
An earlier paper by the same authors in 2021 famously estimated that trawling produced the same emissions of CO2 as the global aviation industry, but critics questioned whether any of this reached the atmosphere and therefore contributed towards climate change. The new paper, based on modelling, says it does.
