This resolution calls for: 
A ban on the fishing practice known as ‘bottom trawling’ where it causes catastrophic loss of marine life as opposed to a complete ban on all forms of bottom trawling.

Our seas are in bad shape. Vulnerable fish stocks and fragile habitats are being rapidly depleted by modern intensive fishing methods and bottom trawling which has already extinguished as many as 10,000 species. Juvenile fish, sharks, rays, cetaceans, dolphins, turtles and seabirds are also being caught as bycatch in huge numbers. Current EU rules dictate that if vulnerable species are caught by accident, they must be thrown back into the water, even if they are already dead. The EU estimates that between 40% and 60% of fish caught by trawlers is dumped back into the sea.  According to Greenpeace, around 7.3 million tonnes of fish are thrown back into the sea unused each year by fishermen.

Some of the species affected are extremely slow growing and would take hundreds or even thousands of years to recover from the damage.  In November 2006, scientists warned that there would be no sea fish left in 50 years if current practices continued, according to the “Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services”, published in the Science Journal.

Seamounts and other habitats in the deep-sea support rich assemblages of organisms such as corals, sea-fans, hydroids and sponges. Like deep-water fish, many of these organisms reach great ages – some corals and sea-fans are estimated to be more than 1,000 years old – and the marine communities themselves may have taken several millennia to develop. The three major gear types used in bottom fishing – gillnets, longlines and bottom trawls – all have an impact on corals and bottom-dwelling organisms.

Almost all of the fish caught by bottom trawling on the high seas are straddling stocks (i.e. migratory species that cross international jurisdictions), and are therefore subject to the 1995 UN Straddling Stocks Agreement (4.20). This agreement obliges signatory states to assess the impact of fishing on non-target species belonging to the same ecosystem, minimise the impact of fishing on non-target species, protect habitats of special concern, and protect biodiversity in the marine environment. In other words, to fully implement the precautionary approach and ecosystem-based fisheries management.