Trawling is a type of fishing in which one or mote boats (trawlers) pull a fishing net through the water behind them. This can involve dragging the net along the sea floor (known as bottom trawling) or pulling it along higher in the water (pelagic trawling).
It is impossible to say when this method was first used in its simplest form, but there is evidence of concerns about its environmental impact as early as the fourteenth century, when fishermen protested against bottom trawling because of the indiscriminate way in which it caught all types and sizes of fish.
It was not until the late eighteenth century that modern beam trawling, a method of bottom trawling where the mouth of the net is held open by a solid metal beam, was widely used. The fishermen of both Barking and Brixham in England claimed credit for pioneering this technique, and it led to a much greater uptake of deep-sea trawling.
By the 1840s, trawling had become the principal method of fishing on a large scale. The arrival of the steam trawler in the 1880s gave a further boost to the trawling industry, giving fishermen the range to exploit more distant fishing grounds.
Environmental concerns have grown over the centuries, particularly to bottom trawling, because of its damage to the seabed and the fact that the nets catch the small fish needed to replenish stocks, and which are often discarded as uneconomic. Even the word "trawl" has itself come to mean a form of fast but indiscriminate collecting. Trawler fishing is now heavily regulated in most countries, but its impact remains the subject of protest and debate.
