Uncovering the Secrets of BC’s Controversial Trawl Fishers

A B.C. conservation organization says it was forced to buy data from private companies to trace the paths of fishing trawlers off the province’s coast.

Pacific Wild is calling for greater government transparency around trawler movements in a report released today that raises concerns about the industry’s impacts on the coastal environment.

"There is not much transparency from DFO," said Sydney Dixon, a marine specialist with Pacific Wild and one of the report’s authors. DFO refers to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, now known as Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

"We think that the public and the coastal communities that are living in this area deserve to know what’s happening in their backyard," she added. "With this industry, because it’s out of sight and out of mind, we think transparency is an added layer that’s really important."

Dixon described trawling as "one of the most common and controversial" fishing methods on the coast. The process involves dragging weighted nets through the ocean, both at mid-water levels and across the seafloor, targeting fish like Pacific hake and rougheye rockfish.

An industry group contacted by The Tyee disputed the report’s findings, saying that B.C.’s trawling industry is among the most regulated fisheries in the world. It employs management practices implemented more than a decade ago under a unique agreement between industry and conservation groups.

Trawl fishing has been criticized for scooping up fish indiscriminately, resulting in biodiversity loss and the death of protected species. Bottom trawling has been shown to damage sensitive environments on the ocean floor, like 9,000-year-old glass sponge reefs adjacent to Haida Gwaii.

"It’s really a blunt tool," Dixon said. "When we talk about bottom trawling specifically, we liken it to clearcutting an old-growth forest."

But unlike clearcutting, trawling’s effects occur unseen, hidden beneath the surface of the ocean, she said.

Today’s report, Dragged to Death, attempts to shed light on the path of nine trawling vessels over a 15-year period, showing that they covered nearly 90,000 square kilometres — or "a footprint larger than Ireland" — off the province's coast.

The project used automatic identification systems, or AIS, data to trace the vessels from their European origins to the B.C. coast.

"Industrial trawling is still relatively new to British Columbia, but the legacy of these nine super trawlers now fishing on our coast really stretches across the globe," Dixon said. "These ships have left a trail of ecological degradation and collapsing fish stocks in their wake."

Referring to the nine vessels as "major factory trawlers," the report describes them as large, industrial-scale fishing vessel equipped to process and often freeze fish onboard. It estimates that at least 40 trawlers operate in B.C.’s waters.

The Deep Sea Trawlers Association of British Columbia, which represents the industry, disputed the report’s description of the vessels, saying none are considered factory trawlers.

All nine are registered in Canada, a requirement for fishing in B.C. waters, according to executive manager Zoe Ahnert.

Ahnert said two of the nine tracked trawlers are no longer operating in B.C. and two are currently being used as research vessels. Three are considered "wet boats," or smaller operations that remain closer to port to offload catch. Only one "freezer vessel," an operation large enough to store fish over longer periods, is actively fishing in B.C., she added.

Last season, there were 28 trawlers operating in B.C. — not the 40 estimated in the report, Ahnert said.

"The B.C. commercial trawl fishery is one of the most heavily regulated fisheries in the world," Ahnert said, adding that the sole vessel with freezer capabilities operates "under strict management plans with sustainability as a top priority."

Ahnert directed The Tyee’s questions about transparency in the trawling industry to DFO. The federal fisheries regulator didn’t respond to The Tyee’s questions prior to publication.

'Big data' used to track trawlers

Pacific Wild’s efforts to track the trawling industry began two years ago, according to Kevin Lester, a GIS analyst who worked on the project. The "first big obstacle" was getting the data, he said.

Accessing the global tracking data required the purchase of large datasets and specialized software to de-encrypt the information. Locating the data took several months and it was "very expensive" to acquire, he said.

That data was used to supplement the trawling "footprint," general information about trawling off B.C.’s coast, released by DFO from the late 1990s through 2016.

"We were interested in finding what concentration of trawling is happening," Lester said. "Even though DFO probably has that information, we had to go and find it."

The resulting maps showed the vessels crossing the Panama Canal and making a "beeline" for the B.C. coast, he said.

The data also included an "activity code" indicating when the trawlers were actively fishing. But the codes appeared unreliable, Lester said, sometimes showing active fishing while the vessels were in port. He cross referenced the active fishing codes with speed and location information to determine when they were actively trawling.

Results indicated that trawlers "repeatedly target some of the most ecologically rich and vulnerable areas" on the coast, according to the report.

Mapping showed the trawlers’ travel routes overlapped with chinook salmon migration, potentially depleting a primary food source for the endangered southern resident killer whales. The report points to a recent DFO report that showed bottom trawlers unintentionally caught nearly 30,000 salmon, 93 per cent of them chinook.

Lester said the data also showed "strong evidence" that active fishing was occurring within the boundaries of several Marine Protected Areas, also known as MPAs.

"We can't say anything for certain. However, the evidence is fairly strong. I don't see why they would be moving at that speed continuously from a time when they were trawling with an activity code of actively fishing over the MPA," Lester said.

While the data doesn’t indicate whether the vessels were mid-water trawling or bottom trawling, "the repeated presence of trawlers within MPA boundaries is deeply concerning," the report said.

Dixon said access to information requests to the federal government revealed DFO enforcement reports indicating illegal fishing in the protected areas last year. The reports don’t indicate which vessels or the location of the MPAs, she added.

Dixon said that it’s difficult to find information about who owns the vessels, which changed hands multiple times during the tracking period and were usually sold when they arrived on the west coast. She said a large percentage of the trawl fleet are U.S.-owned.

Impacts reduced through ground-breaking agreement

The Dragged to Death report points to research by the David Suzuki Foundation in 2007 indicating that 97 per cent of the area along Vancouver Island’s west coast has been contacted by bottom-trawl gear.

Ahnert, with the Deep Sea Trawlers Association, pointed to changes in the industry’s management practices that now protect sensitive ecosystems and reduce the trawling footprint.

"As of 2022, trawl activity was restricted to less than six per cent of B.C.’s coastwide bottom habitat," she said.

She said B.C.’s trawling industry is "subject to a suite of science-based regulations," including species specific allowable catches, individual vessel quotas, gear restrictions, area restrictions and dockside monitoring.

While Pacific Wild’s report said the large trawlers "often include full processing factories within their hulls," Ahnert said Fisheries Act restrictions "effectively prevent the processing of fish on commercial vessels beyond basic handling such as icing, washing, eviscerating, or freezing."

B.C.’s Fish and Seafood Licensing Regulation requires seafood processing to occur only at licensed facilities, which are "land-based and subject to strict food safety, traceability, and environmental standards," she added.

The industry provides over 1,100 jobs in fishing and related activities, generating $68 million in annual wages mainly in rural and coastal regions, Ahnert said.

She pointed to the B.C. Groundfish Trawl Habitat Conservation Collaboration Agreement, an ecosystem-based management plan that came into effect in 2012. Hailed as a precedent-setting agreement between industry and environmental groups, it was meant to address the environmental impacts of bottom trawling.

Included in the agreement were trawling boundaries, a bycatch limit and the creation of a habitat review committee. The agreement protects more than 80 per cent of vulnerable deep-sea coral and sponge habitat, reduced the trawl footprint by more than 20 per cent over historic levels and cut coral and sponge bycatch by 99 per cent, Ahnert said.

She described it as "a rare example of environmentalists and industry creating real, lasting protection together."

John Driscoll, a fisheries science and policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation who worked on the 2012 agreement, believes it has addressed many issues associated with the trawling industry.

"I believe that the mandatory management measures that were put into place as a result of the 2012 work resulted in substantial reductions of the bottom trawl fishery’s habitat impacts," Driscoll said, adding that the agreement resulted in a fixed boundary delineating where bottom trawlers could fish.

It represented a 21-per-cent reduction from the area that had been historically trawled and about a 67-per-cent reduction in impacts to the most sensitive deep-sea habitats between 800 and 1,500 metres, Driscoll added.

"The 2012 agreement also implemented individual vessel limits on coral and sponge bycatch, to ensure that each vessel’s operator had a compelling financial reason to avoid corals and sponges," he said.

While he said that DFO’s data on quotas for individual species is "already quite transparent," he agreed that greater transparency around where the fleet is fishing would be helpful.

He said one of the challenges across all fisheries is that DFO has to abide by privacy laws that limit how much detailed information they can share.

"I recognize that DFO has to work within certain limitations," he said. "This is particularly challenging when it comes to spatial fishing effort information, as DFO has to aggregate it in a way that ensures the privacy of individual operators."

He added that a habitat review committee established by the 2012 agreement is meant to address things like the bottom trawl fleet’s footprint, impacts to coral and sponges and other issues.

"However, this committee has not been active in recent years. If it was active and supported by DFO, this could be a venue for improving transparency," he said.

Pacific Wild’s Dixon said the 2012 agreement was a "positive step," but didn’t go far enough to reducing the impact of bottom trawling.

"While it was a positive step in the right direction, we don’t feel like it was enough. There are still so many valuable areas on our coast that are consistently being targeted by these trawlers," Dixon said.

The group said that the lack of public data on the trawling industry is making scientific oversight difficult.

"There's more public information on other industries that occur on the B.C. coast," said Dixon, pointing to logging as an example.

"With this industry, because it's out of sight and out of mind, we think transparency is an added layer that's really important," she said.

"Without this transparency, nobody knows what's happening with these trawlers."