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Throughout the world, there is concern about the impact of trawling on deep-sea bottom communities (1). For the most part, this concern has been directed toward deep-sea coral reefs and sponge beds (2, 3). Reef structures, formed by the scleractinian coral, Lophelia pertusa, for example, can be up to 8,000 y old and can provide habitat for more than 700 smaller species (2). In contrast, there has been the sense that trawling on open mud bottoms has little or no impact on the resident species or at least that, because the smaller species have higher turnover rates, the recovery from trawling will be rapid (4). In PNAS, however, Pusceddu et al. show that trawling on deep-sea muddy bottoms strongly alters the biochemical nature of the sediment and reduces the species diversity and abundance of meiofaunal organisms (animals ∼40–500 µm in size), and, in particular, the nematodes (5). As the fisheries of the continental shelves have become fully exploited (6), the search for commercially valuable species has moved off the continental shelf and onto the upper slope and offshore seamounts, resulting in depletion of deep-water stocks and also with consequences for benthic habitats (7). Deep-sea trawl gear is large and heavy. The paired otter doors, which are metal plates pulled at an angle to the direction of movement of the ship and therefore act to spread …

Trawling exerts big impacts on small beasts