Bottom trawling in Europe is devastating marine life in more than half of the areas that are supposed to be protected by law. Bottom trawling in marine protected areas isn’t just an environmental aberration, it’s an economic failure,” said Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer in Residence, founder of Pristine Seas, and one of the authors of the study. There’s no escaping that bottom trawling is, simply, a destructive fishing method in which a net – some so large that they could hold ten 747 jets – is dragged along the seafloor to catch fish and other marine species, razing marine habitats and killing organisms along the way. The practice is exceedingly wasteful, with up to 75% of the marine life getting caught in the nets and ultimately discarded.