Trawler Mud Trails

I was reading about fishing trawler mud trails today in the paper so I decided to see what I could find..

(trawling scrapes the sea floor and kicks up an incredible amount of sediment/mud while destroying reefs and everything else on the sea floor)

Check these photos out:
Kyle Van Houtan and Daniel Pauly - trawler mudtrail images

 

It's only funny if you compare the mud trails from the US boats to...well...everybody elses

I thought this method of fishing became illegal recently?

 

Yes they did ban it in the south pacific recently. 8)

 

This is the main reason I won't eat shrimp. (The second reason is because shrimp are like the cockroaches of the sea.....I can't imagine putting a cockroach in my mouth).

 

I sure hope it does get banned everywere.
As far as not eating shrimp. I have no problem trying to eat anything other people survived eating If you don't like it just add a little hot sauce.

 

I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU...LALALALALA...I recently discovered that I loooooove shrimp, cooked Southern style so don't you ruin it for me!

 

;d

Lol

 

Hot sauce ?? Hell if they are cooked properly then all you need is cold beer right off the ice..I guess ya'll don't eat mud bugs either ?

 

Loved shrimp all my life.

Chances are that most of the shrimp you will eat here in the US come from shrimp farms in either the Phillippines or Viet Nam.

Makes them cheaper then ever (now that US Govt has dropped its tarriff on them) --- kind of hard on indigenous shrimpers, but great for us.

I try to get as much as I can during our very short (2-3 day) shrimp fishing season here in Pudget Sound (Hood Canal)...;D

 

I used to be a Shrimper off the Tampa coast. I cant vouch for how they shrimp elsewhere but we used mud trawls and we all steered clear of any reef areas. You would be amazed how much the boat owners care about the environment. #1 because the ecosystem is their means of living. #2, and I know this isn't gonna sound eco friendly, but trawling over any rocks or reef would tear up thier trawls and nets, which is very expensive to replace. Enough to break the bank of the average boat owner.

The damage the trawls do over mud is actualy less than the average storm and is actualy benificial to the majority of the wildlife minus the the shrimp and flounder populations (which are still flourishing). The dolphins love the shrimpers, everything the shrimpers throw back get gobbled by the dolphins making thier hunting jobs alot easier.

FYI - Whenever you eat Chinese Food w/shrimp, you are usualy eating gulf shrimp. And STAY AWAY FROM SCALLOPS!!!!!!! 99.9% of the time you are eating Skate (sting ray) Fins. Actual scallops are very small, the size of a dime in diameter. If they are larger than that, you will probably pay per lb the same as you would for kobe beef.

Now I am not defending the shrimping community as a whole. There are some that completely disrepect thier enviorment. Leaking deisel engines, over harvesting a praticular area, littering, irresponsible trawling. But the majority of those guys lived off the land (or water) and tryed to respect it that much.

Just my 2 cents.