Field Report- A Trawl Tale
Darlings.
No celebrity anecdotes today. No glamorous escapades. No winking references to my time as a police frogman in the Solent (the less said about that the better). This one is harder. But a fox who calls himself a food freedom fighter has no business looking away from the ugly stuff.
Because not all fisherman are like my friends Marc & Jim, Caroline, Chris, Tyson, Charlies, Hanna & Matt, Ali, Pete, Andy, Chris, Bill & Will, Hakim and Kevin.
So. Let us talk about what happens beneath the waves when an industrial trawler goes to work.
A net the size of thirteen jumbo jets, mes choux. Steel doors weighing five tonnes apiece. Dragged at speed across the ocean floor. Coral reefs that took centuries to grow — gone in seconds. Sponge beds, sea grasses, entire ecosystems scraped to bare mud. Scientists call it 'marine deforestation' and they are not being dramatic: bottom trawling releases up to 370 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year. From fishing, darlings. Fishing.
Then there is the catch they didn't want. For every kilo of prawns a trawler hauls up, up to ten kilos of other life comes with it. Dolphins. Porpoises. Sharks. Rays. Turtles. Juvenile cod. Seahorses. Seals. Humpback whales. More than a thousand dolphins and whales drown as a result of UK trawling every single year — tangled in mesh, unable to breathe. The industry calls this 'bycatch'. Globally, thirty-eight million tonnes of marine life is destroyed this way annually. Scooped up, crushed, and shovelled back into the sea. Dead.
Discarding was made illegal in 2019. Yet eighteen million fish suppers' worth of haddock is still dumped at sea each year, because almost nobody is watching. And in our 'protected' marine areas? Trawling is permitted in sixty out of sixty-four of them.
So next time you're at the fish counter — any fish counter — ask. How was this caught? Was it trawled or was it lined? Can you tell me which boat landed it? If they can't answer, darlings, walk away. And find someone who can.
Because every fish you buy from a day boat is a vote against the dead list.
As I sat in my brambles last night, darlings, turning this over, and I found myself thinking of Lewis Carroll. Of a Walrus. A Carpenter. And a great many oysters who were promised a pleasant walk and ended up as supper. Carroll understood something the fishing industry would rather you didn't: the cruellest trick is the one performed with a smile.
So — with apologies to the great man, and none whatsoever to the trawling industry — I give you this.
Toodle pip.
R
X
The Trawler and Fisheries Board
The beam was dragging on the floor,
Dragging with all its might:
It did its very best to scrape
The ocean bare and white —
And this was fine, the Trawler said,
Because there's no one here tonight.
The coral snapped like kindling sticks,
The sponge beds tore like bread.
A century of growing, gone
In seven seconds dead:
The seabed looked like ploughed-up field —
A graveyard, neatly spread.
The Trawler and the Fisheries Board
Were dining, side by side;
They smiled like anything to see
The trawl so full, so wide:
'Keep going at this pace,'
They said, and we'll surely catch the tide!'
'O Fishes, come and swim with us!'
The Trawler called below.
'A brighter sea, a richer haul,
Sustainability to show!
'We only want a modest catch —'
(He winked.) '— or so.'
The eldest cod just looked at him
With cold, unblinking eye:
She'd seen the shadow of the mesh
Blot out the open sky —
She turned her tail and swam and swam and swam.
The young ones didn't fly.
For shoals of mackerel hurried up,
And silverside, and skate, and tiny cod no bigger than
A grown man's open face,
And dolphins turning, caught mid-breath —
They hadn't time for grace.
A porpoise and her calf came next,
A turtle, old and slow,
A shark pup tangled by the gills,
A ray's white belly-glow —
All tumbling through the tightening mesh
Like laundry in the flow.
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more:
Ten thousand lives per single haul
Piled on the trawler's floor —
A slick of silver, pink and grey,
Eye-deep from stern to fore.
The Trawler and the Fisheries Board
Sat down to sort the dead,
And picked the ones the market wants
And left the rest, unfed:
'The time has come,' the Trawler said,
'To toss them back instead.'
'Of quotas — Loss — and subsidies —
Of licences — and kings —
And why a thousand dolphins drown
And nobody does a thing.'
'No hurry!' said the Fisheries Board.
'We'll form a working group in spring.'
The dolphins went back in the sea.
The porpoise and her young.
The turtle and the shark pup too,
Each one already done.
They sank like stones through greying water —
Dead weight, every one.
'A label,' said the Trawler then,
'Is what we chiefly need:
Responsibly sourced should do the trick —
The shoppers never read.
Now if you're ready, Fishes dear,
We can begin to feed.'
'But not on us!' the Fishes cried,
Turning a little pale. '
'We thought you said sustainable!
Was that not in the deal?'
'The market's strong,' the Trawler smiled.
'Now how d'you like the steel?'
'It seems a shame,' the Trawler sighed,
To waste them by the tonne,
After we've dragged them from so deep
And crushed them, every one!'
The Fisheries Board said nothing but
'The spreadsheet's nearly done!'
'I weep for you,' the Trawler said:
'I deeply sympathise.'
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the sellable size,
Holding his sustainability report
Before his streaming eyes.
'O Fishes,' said the Fisheries Board,
'You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we discuss the bycatch now?'
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd discarded every one.
