Bottom trawling affects seabed habitats, but its large‐scale impacts remain poorly quantified. Assessment of trawling impacts is essential to support monitoring and achieving sustainability objectives under international conventions, sustainable development goals, and seafood certification programs. We present a Europe‐wide quantitative assessment of bottom trawling impacts, accounting for regional seabed‐community sensitivity...

To inform ecosystem-based fisheries management in line with the EU legislation objectives for marine fisheries, we evaluated the ecological outcomes of alternative spatial management scenarios to fisheries that consider the ecological impact of bottom trawling on the benthic ecosystem in the Eastern Ionian Sea. Trawling intensity in terms of swept area ratio (SAR) and benthic community sensitivity were combined to estimate the...

This study investigates the implications of spatial management strategies on fish populations and fisheries across EU waters, particularly focusing on establishing potential areas for fishing closures to protect nurseries, benthic communities, and biodiversity hotspots in the Northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. The research addresses the effectiveness of prohibiting certain fishing practices in the context of the EU Comm...

Current fishing practices often do not allow adequate selection of species or sizes of fish, resulting in unwanted catches, subsequently discarded, with the consequent negative effects on both marine communities and fisheries profitability. The cross-analysis of density patches of potential unwanted catches and distribution of fishing effort can support the identification of spatial-temporal hot-spots in which the fishing pres...