The UN Bottom Fisheries Workshop and Review 2026: A Turning Point for the Deep Sea?

What is the UN Bottom Fisheries Workshop?

Since 2004, a series of United Nations resolutions have called for increasingly comprehensive measures to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs), their associated and dependent species, and marine biodiversity in general from damage caused by deep-sea fishing. 

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the landmark resolution 61/105 in 2006, calling on States to “take action immediately…and consistent with the precautionary approach and ecosystem approaches, to sustainably manage fish stocks and protect VMEs including seamounts, hydrothermal vents and cold-water corals, from destructive fishing practices, recognizing the immense importance and value of deep-sea ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain.” 

The resolution committed States and regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) to take specific measures to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) from the adverse impact of bottom fisheries in the high seas and to ensure the long-term sustainability of deep-sea fish stocks. These measures included conducting impact assessments to determine whether significant adverse impacts (SAIs) to VMEs would occur, managing fisheries to prevent SAIs on VMEs, and closing areas of the high seas to bottom fishing where VMEs are known or likely to occur. 

This resolution and subsequent resolutions adopted by the UNGA essentially constitute a global agreement designed to conserve deep-sea species, protect deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystems, and reverse the degradation in areas beyond national jurisdiction caused by deep-sea bottom fishing, in particular bottom trawling.

Since then, the UNGA has been engaged in ongoing progress-checking, monitoring how States and RFMOs live up to the measures laid out in the resolutions and conducting reviews in 2009, 2011, 2016, and 2022. 

Following its 2022 review, the UNGA decided to conduct a further review in 2026 of the actions taken by States and RFMOs, and to precede that review with a two-day multi-stakeholder workshop. The workshop will take place in-person at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 13 to 14 July 2026 to discuss the implementation of previous resolutions and address the impacts of bottom fishing on VMEs and the long-term sustainability of deep-sea fish stocks. Workshop participants will include States, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), RFMOs and other fisheries bodies, and other relevant specialized agencies, funds and programmes, intergovernmental bodies and non-governmental organizations.

The Threat: What is Bottom Trawling and Why Does It Matter?

Seamounts, which rise high in the water column, invite a range of diverse life forms to thrive on and around their surfaces. In the same way that water flows around stones in a stream, seamounts create current patterns, helping to make them hotspots of biodiversity. Currents wash away sediment on seamounts to reveal their rocky surfaces and render them ideal habitats for animals that require solid objects to attach to, such as corals and sponges. Currents also push nutrient-rich water up the side of the seamount to higher in the water column. This leads to the growth of phytoplankton, which in turn attracts fish who feed on these organisms and larger migratory animals who prey on the fish, such as whales, sharks and even seabirds. Seamounts are essential for species’ survival, yet they are among the ocean’s most vulnerable habitats and are under threat from destructive fishing practices, most notably bottom trawling. 

Deep-sea bottom trawling is a method of industrial fishing that involves dragging a large net attached to heavy weights across the seafloor, sweeping up everything in its path. A single pass of a bottom trawl in the deep sea can cause serious damage to deep-sea ecosystems, in some cases wiping out ancient communities of deep-sea corals and sponges. It can take decades or even centuries to see signs of recovery on areas impacted by deep-sea bottom trawling and the damage can be permanent. The United Nations’ Second World Ocean Assessment (WOA II) found that fishing, especially bottom trawling, constitutes the greatest current threat to seamount ecosystems. 

The Emperor Seamount Chain is a prime example of the damage bottom trawling inflicts on these hotspots of biodiversity. The large underwater mountain range in the northwest Pacific was aggressively targeted by bottom trawlers from the 1960s to the 1980s. This has left a legacy of devastating damage that the area has not recovered from, including bottom trawl scars on the seabed thousands of meters beneath the surface, and discarded gear such as nets and trawl doors littered across the seamounts. Stumps from arborescent corals and rubble from reef-forming corals have also been observed, and since many of the Emperor Seamount Chain coral species are not found anywhere else in the world, the damage inflicted is all the more significant.

The Road to Protection

Progress has been made by some RFMOs and States in safeguarding seamounts and other deep-sea ecosystems from the impacts of bottom trawling. 

The Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Living Marine Resources (CCAMLR) is an example of a RFMO making significant progress. It has banned the use of bottom trawl and bottom gill net gears on the high seas and implemented a range of assessment measures. Encouragingly, many areas have been closed to all types of bottom fishing as a result of area closures and marine protected areas (MPAs) designated by CCAMLR. The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) has also closed all seamounts to bottom-contact fishing within its regulatory area that have summits shallower than 4,000 meters. 

However, some RFMOs have slowed in their implementation, or done very little to begin with, and there remain significant gaps and variability in the implementation of key elements and commitments in the resolutions. A handful of countries continue to authorize their fishing vessels to carry out bottom trawling on seamounts and oceanic ridge systems in the high seas, specifically New Zealand, Japan, and the Cook Islands. New Zealand has even sought to reverse protective measures for VMEs, with their recent proposal to increase the amount of coral and other vulnerable deep-sea species that can be trawled up as bycatch on the high seas without consequence. 

Despite certain RFMO members and States standing in the way of progress, the path to change is being paved. 

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Motion 032 called for a transition away from bottom trawling on seamounts by the end of 2026 and passed with an overwhelming majority; 95% of States and government agency members and 99% of NGOs and Indigenous People’s organizations voted Yes at the 2025 IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) after the Motion was brought to the Congress by the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), together with lead proposer WWF Australia and co-proposers Marine Conservation Institute, Blue Marine Foundation, Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Environment and Conservation Organizations of New Zealand, and Australian Foundation for Wilderness. 

This was followed by widespread support for a resolution and decision on prioritizing the protection of seamount ecosystems at the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). The resolution and decision on Conserving Seamount Ecosystems, brought to the meeting by Panama and Monaco, was supported by the DSCC, together with its members OceanCare, WWF, WCS, IFAW and Birdlife International, among others. The scope of the adopted decision was broadened by CMS Parties to prioritize seamount protection from both destructive fishing practices and overfishing. 

A major milestone in international ocean governance was marked at the beginning of 2026 when the High Seas Treaty came into force, offering new tools to safeguard the deep ocean’s ecosystems, including area-based management tools such as high seas marine protected areas and environmental impact assessments. These tools create a new layer of accountability and raise the bar by placing clear obligations on the international community to uphold environmental protection standards. 

Along with the 30×30 global target to protect and conserve at least 30% of the world’s land, freshwater and ocean by 2030, these resolutions and the High Seas Treaty reinforce the importance of delivering on existing commitments to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and protect seamounts ahead of the UN Bottom Fisheries Review and Workshop. 

We now look to the 2026 Review and Workshop as a test of the international community’s credibility on ocean protection and motivation to deliver it.

What we’re calling for

Scientific evidence shows seamounts and the species and ecosystems they support to be unique, structurally complex and fragile, and there is a growing global scientific consensus to protect them from destructive practices.

The DSCC has been acting on international concerns over the harmful impacts of deep-sea bottom trawling on seamounts and deep-sea ecosystems since 2004. We are now calling on all States to activate a transition away from bottom trawling on seamounts in the high seas by the end of 2026, in line with IUCN Resolution 8.032, and to proactively protect seamounts and other VMEs from destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling in the high seas by the end of 2027.

Reasons for hope

Research on the resilience of deep-sea ecosystems is still scarce, but a review of recovery scenarios indicates that signs of recovery are seen on some seamount communities 40-50 years after trawling has ceased. Furthermore, scientists predict that under the correct conditions, some areas on previously fished seamounts could potentially return to a pre-disturbance state. 

The path to seamount protection has been built on science, political will and determination. The tools to reach absolute protection for seamounts and other VMEs are in our hands. What is needed now at the July 2026 Workshop and Review is decisive action.

Learn more on the United Nations Review of Bottom Fisheries and access key resources for policymakers, journalists, and advocates on our dedicated webpage.