Although bottom trawling is unregulated in international waters,
several nations have moved to establish bottom trawling bans in their
Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) which extend 370 km (200 nautical miles)
beyond a nation's coast.
- In 1999 Australia prohibited bottom trawling in the south Tasman Sea and in the Great Australian Bight Marine Park off South Australia. In 2004, fishing was banned altogether in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
- In 2004, Britain’s Royal Society recommended in a report for the British parliament that bottom trawling be banned in U.K. waters. The next year the European Union closed the Darwin Mounds off Scotland to bottom trawling.
- In 2005 bottom trawling below 1,000 metres in sensitive areas of the Mediterranean off Italy, Cyprus, and Egypt.
- In 2005 Alaska closed over 960,000 km sq. to bottom trawling. The area represents 60 percent of the Aleutian shelf habitat and is the largest trawling closure in the world. were recently passed.
- In 2005 the U.S. imposed a permanent ban on trawl fishing in nearly 775,000 square km off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California.
- The New Zealand Government closed 32 percent of the country's EEZ to bottom trawling.
