BBC’s new Trawlermen series fails to address sustainability, says coalition

Shot in fishing vessels on the high seas, amid crashing waves that threaten to sweep all on deck overboard, the long-running BBC documentary programme Trawlermen offers viewers an insight into how a crew navigates one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

However, the new series, Trawlermen: Hunting the Catch, launched in October, fails to mention “even briefly” the environmental and climate crisis challenges or problems with bycatch faced by the fishing industry, according to the Our Seas coalition of 135 conservation and fishing organisations.

Our Seas has written to the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, to express concern that the series “misses the opportunity to explore urgent sustainability issues” in the fishing industry.

The coalition, which includes the Blue Marine Foundation, Sea Shepherd UK and Fauna and Flora International, said sequences showed decks “writhing with marine life” hauled onboard with trawl nets, including undersized crabs, dogfish and even a blue shark, listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of…