Footage lifts lid on seabed destruction from trawlers

Dramatic footage from Sir David Attenborough’s landmark new film captures the destruction caused to the seabed by bottom trawling.

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Ocean With David Attenborough, released in cinemas to mark the renowned naturalist and TV presenter’s 99th birthday, includes a sequence where the camera follows a bottom trawl, where nets are dragged with a metal beam across the seabed to catch fish.

As the iron chains travel across the ocean floor they can be seen bulldozing through the habitat, stirring up silt which releases carbon and scooping up species indiscriminately.

The footage is thought to be the first time the process has been filmed in such high quality, showing the scale of destruction caused by trawling.

Sir David can be heard saying that “very few places are safe” from the damaging fishing method, which occurs daily across vast swathes of the world’s seabeds.