Behind a trawl fishing boat, a vast net can spend hours scraping the seafloor, funneling schools of fish toward a narrow bag at the back. A single tow can bring tens of thousands of pounds of seafood aboard.
That efficiency is why trawling has become central to some of the world’s largest commercial fisheries. But the gear that allows fishers to harvest large quantities at once can also catch unwanted marine life and harm seafloor ecosystems. Bottom trawling is the most extensive direct human physical disturbance to seabed habitats worldwide.
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A trawl net, which can extend in the length of several football fields, stretches behind the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
A trawl net stretches behind the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Crew members sweep pollock and bycatch, including jellyfish, basket stars and a chum salmon, into a hatch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
The F/V Progress, bottom, delivers its catch to a processing vessel in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Crew members sweep pollock and jellyfish bycatch into a hatch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Pollock spill into a hatch aboard the F/V Progress alongside bycatch including a chum salmon, top right, and jellyfish, in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Deckhand Justin Schramm lifts trawl doors, which help spread the mouth of the net open, from the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Trawls tow a large, funnel-shaped net through the ocean to catch fish and shellfish in bulk. Bottom trawls use heavy doors and a footrope — a chain-weighted line running along the bottom of the net's opening — to scrape the seafloor for cod, sole, flounder, shrimp and other species. The gear is designed to stir up sediment as it herds fish into the net.
Bottom trawlers alone bring in about 42 billion pounds (19 million metric tons) of fish and invertebrates each year — roughly a quarter of the world’s wild marine catch.
Pelagic, or midwater, trawls are designed to fish higher in the water column for species such as pollock and herring. But when those fish gather close to the bottom, parts of pelagic gear can also drag along the seafloor. The Associated Press witnessed this method onboard the F/V Progress in July.
Industrial trawl nets can be several football fields long and span hundreds of feet wide.
Unintended catch, known as bycatch, is often discarded at sea, frequently dead.
Marine fisheries discarded more than 20 billion pounds (9 million metric tons) of catch annually from 2010 to 2014 — roughly 11% of total catch — according to a 2020 study based on United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data. Trawl fisheries accounted for nearly 60% of those discards.
“There is a need for people to not treat the ocean as out of sight and out of mind,” said Simon Thrush, a marine science professor at the University of Auckland who studies seafloor ecosystems. “The footprint of trawling is really extensive.”
Some fisheries have adopted escape panels that let larger animals separate from the target catch before it’s hauled aboard. But the effectiveness and use of these devices vary by fishery, species and gear. Fishers also try to avoid areas where unwanted species are concentrated.
Dragging fishing gear across the seafloor can remove and damage corals and sponges, which provide food and habitat for other marine life. Other bottom-dwelling animals such as crabs can also be harmed.
Deep-sea corals and sponges grow slowly and can take decades or even centuries to recover.
“Deep-water corals can live for thousands of years and grow to be like trees that are 30 meters tall,” Thrush said. “Those habitats are destroyed by trawling. One trawl is enough.”
A single pass of bottom contact fishing gear reduced the abundance of seafloor-dwelling invertebrates by an average of 26%, according to a 2018 global meta-analysis. Scientists note that figure is likely an underestimate because some analyzed sites had been trawled before researchers measured the effects.
Seafloor sediment holds the largest reservoir of carbon on Earth. Bottom trawling stirs up the sediment, exposing buried organic matter to oxygen and microbes that can convert it into carbon dioxide.
A 2024 modeling study found that once that CO2 is produced, about 55% to 60% reaches the atmosphere within a decade. Because carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere, those emissions can add to global warming.
Scientists are still working to determine how much carbon is converted, though the study estimated the resulting emissions could be up to roughly twice those produced by fuel burned by the world’s fishing fleets.
Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram: @ahammergram.
The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
A trawl net, which can extend in the length of several football fields, stretches behind the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
A trawl net stretches behind the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Crew members sweep pollock and bycatch, including jellyfish, basket stars and a chum salmon, into a hatch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
The F/V Progress, bottom, delivers its catch to a processing vessel in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Friday, July 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Crew members sweep pollock and jellyfish bycatch into a hatch aboard the F/V Progress in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Pollock spill into a hatch aboard the F/V Progress alongside bycatch including a chum salmon, top right, and jellyfish, in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Wednesday, July 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
Deckhand Justin Schramm lifts trawl doors, which help spread the mouth of the net open, from the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, Thursday, July 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)
President Donald Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 and Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday about whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter in December, telling reporters he wouldn’t watch it. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance told reporters. He and Trump have both sought to highlight the shooter’s 2009 attack at Fort Hood where he killed 13 people.
Trump said he has struck a deal to obtain over a million tons of diesel from Russia, a stunning reversal of years of U.S. pressure on Moscow as fuel prices remain high ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it, “a weak decision by strong partners,” and suggested negotiations between the U.S. and Ukraine on how to end the war were “being used as a smoke screen.”
Also, a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said.
An irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage, and spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city.
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Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, condemned Hegseth’s plan, saying there’s a reason why “almost no countries in the world engage in this barbaric practice.”
“Public executions are the hallmark of authoritarian regimes like Iran and North Korea, not the United States of America,” Warner said.
“Beyond the profound moral concerns, a public execution could hand terrorist organizations a propaganda victory,” he said, and put U.S. service members and others overseas at risk.
Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah pointed to Rome’s bloody spectacles and said a “civilization erodes when it cultivates an appetite for executions as a form of entertainment.”
“Secretary Hegseth’s plan to livestream the Fort Hood execution risks feeding that appetite,” Curtis said. “I urge him to reconsider.”
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said how the U.S. carries out justice matters.
“I would expect this from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America,” she said. “I urge the Pentagon to reverse this gruesome decision.”
Trump says he approves of Hasan’s execution by firing squad.
The Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on Dec. 3.
The Pentagon had announced on Thursday that it plans to livestream the execution. It would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961.
“He will be killed. He will be, through firing squad,” Trump told reporters before flying to Syracuse, New York, for a political event. “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes. And I think the death penalty is a very worthy way of going for him.”
Trump did not appear to answer when asked whether it was appropriate to livestream the event or whether he was going to watch the execution.
Zelenskyy called the deal Trump struck to obtain diesel from Russia, “a weak decision, unfortunately, a weak decision by strong partners,” according to a statement released by the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington.
Trump’s announced the deal as his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were meeting with Ukrainian officials to discuss a proposal to try to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“I believe our team is simply being used as a smokescreen. And that is certainly not fair. It is certainly not how partners should treat each other,” Zelenskyy said.
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The president appeared with the former heavyweight champion as he left the White House to fly to his rally on Friday night in Syracuse, New York.
“This is Iron Mike Tyson,” Trump told reporters gathered on the White House lawn for his departure, before joking, “I won’t be fighting him today.”
Trump noted that he and Tyson have “been friends for a long time” and the crowd will “be happy to see Mike.”
Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992, and served three years in prison.
The event in Los Angeles was meant to bring attention to the candidate’s promise to lower California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices to $3 a gallon. The average rate in the state stood at $6.33 per gallon Friday, according to AAA.
“This is a preview of what you get when I’m governor,” he told a driver in a video posted to his X page.
Hilton, a former Fox News host who’s running against Democrat Xavier Becerra, has blamed Democratic leadership for the state’s notoriously high cost of living.
He’s making a final push to appeal to voters with mail ballots being sent out ahead of the Nov. 3 deadline to vote.
The United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has begun spending against Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. The spending was revealed in a filing late Friday, and is only $94,000 to start.
The group spent close to $30 million against El-Sayed — a vocal critic of Israel — in his Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens. Until Friday, the group had stayed out of the general election race. During a Senate debate Thursday, El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, signaled he would accept AIPAC’s support when asked directly about it.
A spokesperson for AIPAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president said conservative commentator Katie Zacharia, a communications adviser for Trump’s media company, will replace Karoline Leavitt as the chief spokesperson for the White House.
Trump announced the hire in a social media post on Friday, describing Zacharia as “a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.”
Zacharia briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year and has been a commentator for Fox News and Newsmax. Trump said she was previously involved in his campaigns and helped in key swing states.
A request for comment left with Zacharia was not immediately answered. Her LinkedIn says she has a law degree from Pepperdine University.
The president has now formally confirmed that Hurricane Isaias means he won’t be attending Saturday night’s Alabama-Georgia football game.
He wrote on his social media site on Friday that “based on the fact that a huge Hurricane/Storm is coming, it is important to have our wonderful First Responders, Law Enforcement, and others, focused on that Storm, and in no way be thinking about the safety, or presence, of the President of the United States, ME!”
“Therefore, I will miss that potentially unbelievable Game, Alabama vs. Georgia,” Trump continued. “But, hopefully, the Game will go on despite the weather!”
He also promised, without providing details, “I will be visiting both of those Teams at a later date.”
The president will no longer be attending Saturday’s football game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
Trump had been planning to travel to Tuscaloosa for the rivalry clash after a rally planned in Tennessee on Saturday. Asked about the impact of the storm on Wednesday said “I gotta go to the game” but said his plans might change based on the weather.
Trump had said he did not want to divert resources from the emergency response.
President Donald Trump said that he has struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, a stunning reversal of years of U.S. pressure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine and an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
Trump said on social media on Friday that he struck the deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call in which he was expected to discuss a suspected case of plague in Russia. Instead, Trump announced that Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.” Russia will deliver another 3 million tons “within a short period of time” after that, he wrote.
Trump’s shocking announcement comes after he signed a sweeping Russia sanctions law last month that aimed at clamping down on Russia’s energy economy, among other areas, that fuel its war against Ukraine.
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Katie Zacharia has been offered the job as press secretary, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal hiring.
It was not immediately clear whether she has accepted. A message left with Zacharia was not immediately answered on Friday. The post has been open since Karoline Leavitt left in August.
Zacharia is a senior communications adviser for Trump Media & Technology, the company behind the Truth Social platform. She briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security this year, and according to her LinkedIn profile has been a commentator for Fox News and Newsmax.
Her LinkedIn profile says she has bachelor’s and law degrees from Pepperdine University.
Earlier Friday morning, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the U.S. government’s decision to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad.
Vice President Vance is a convert to the Catholic Church, which has long opposed capital punishment.
“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the conference, said in a statement. He added that the decision was “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will travel to Michigan next week to campaign with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, further throwing her substantial platform behind a fellow progressive in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races.
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent figures in the progressive movement, said at a New York City fundraiser last week that “if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”
The two will campaign Oct. 15 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a heavily Republican region that will test the appeal of their progressive politics. They will then travel to southeast Michigan for campaign events Oct. 16.
“Abdul has built a winning coalition with an agenda to bring down costs for Michigan families and I could not be more excited to join him for the final stretch of this race,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
“These are accusations. You don’t take messages that people allegedly had between one person or another — or one person’s story — and say, ‘Oh, because of that, Kimberly Guilfoyle is guilty,’ the vice president told reporters.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, asked a donor and supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump to pay a $100,000 credit card bill just before her confirmation hearing and that she promising him access to administration officials if he did.
Vance suggested it was too early to reach conclusions about Guilfoyle and the allegations.
“Let’s actually see what the facts are. Let’s see what the truth is,” he said. “And, obviously, if there was something bad that happened, then people have to suffer consequences.”
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan in December but told reporters that if it is livestreamed, “I’m not going to be watching it.”
The Republican vice president said, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” when asked about the plans that the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday. But Vance then tried to set aside the controversy over the shocking plans for a public execution and said Hasan’s crimes should not be forgotten.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” the Republican said.
“Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he said.
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Trump says his administration “resurrected” Christopher Columbus and other figures from American history whose statues and legacies were being threatened by what he called the “radical left.”
In a meandering address at a Columbus Day celebration at the White House, Trump said: “They want to tear down the history and heritage that makes us who we are, not only Columbus.”
He said George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been targets too. “We had a time when they wanted to rip down the statue of Abraham Lincoln,” because “they thought he was a racist. He’s the one that freed the country,” Trump said.
There have been laws on the books for years to punish people for defacing monuments and statues. Trump signed executive orders in 2020 that ordered monuments to be rebuilt and pushed for tougher punishments for people who defaced them.
Senate Majority PAC, the outside spending group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, says it will begin airing television ads in the Kansas Senate race on Saturday. The $5 million television campaign will air on TV stations statewide through Election Day.
The ads are aimed at attacking first-term Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who is in a competitive reelection race with Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, the leader of the nation’s largest United Methodist Church.
Schumer’s group is weighing in a week just days after Republicans’ chief Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, announced it was reserving advertising time in the state, where no Democrat has been elected to the Senate since 1932.
As of Friday, Senate Leadership Fund, aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, had reserved $10.3 million through Nov. 3.
The Department of Homeland Security would not give The Associated Press a clear answer Friday on whether non-criminal immigration enforcement would be suspended in states impacted by Isaias during the emergency.
In past administrations, including Trump’s first, the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes issue messaging in the run up to hurricanes clarifying its immigration enforcement policies during extreme weather.
Before Hurricane Irma in 2017, the agency issued a statement that “DHS will not conduct non-criminal immigration enforcement operations in the affected area … When it comes to rescuing people in the wake of Hurricane Irma, immigration status is not and will not be a factor.”
Asked Friday what the DHS policy is during Isaias, the department instead cited a statement about FEMA’s storm preparations. It included: “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin’s leadership, the safety of the American people is DHS’s top priority.”
DHS did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
The president said Nidal Malik Hasan will be getting “the death penalty through firing squad. And he deserves it.”
Trump called Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009, “a maniac.”
Trump has long been a vocal supporter of capital punishment. But he didn’t mention plans the Pentagon has announced to livestream the execution so the broader public can see it.
During an event marking Columbus Day, the president talked excitedly about the ballroom he demolished the East Wing to build and even declared, “I’m going to do something that I rarely do.”
He then invited the event’s attendees to tour the ballroom construction site and said he’d lead the impromptu tour of construction “which nobody sees.”
That’s not true. In fact, Trump inviting attendees of unrelated events at the White House to see the ballroom construction site has become something of a Trump fixture lately.
The president led a group after a back-to-school event — including many children — to see the site. He did the same for attendees of a recent state dinner in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping and those who came to an event marking National Hispanic Heritage Month.
The U.S. president is celebrating Christopher Columbus after erecting a statue to the nautical explorer on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus.
The statue is a replica of a Columbus statue in Baltimore that was thrown into the Baltimore harbor in 2020.
Columbus heralded the start of European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. In his Oct. 7 proclamation for Columbus Day, Trump said the explorer had started a chain of events that led to the creation of the United States.
FILE - Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook leaves the Supreme Court in Washington, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks during a news conference near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
