Mudtrails

What's a mudtrail? It's a bit like a contrail in the ocean, only it's mud from the ocean floor instead of condensed water vapor in the sky. We're all familiar with contrails because all we have to do is look up and see the streaks of white criss-crossing the blue yonder. In certain times and places, mudtrails are nearly as ubiquitous in coastal waters as contrails are overhead; we just don't have the same appreciation for them because we're down looking up, not up looking down. If we were, here's what we might see during shrimping season:


The satellite image shows a section of the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. The white dots are shrimp trawlers -- fishing boats that drag weighted nets across the ocean floor, a technique that is not only indiscriminate in what it catches but also destroys reefs and the benthic habitat of the ocean floor. By stirring up the organic matter in the sediment, it may even contribute to the formation of so-called "dead zones," such as the giant one that appears annually in the Gulf of Mexico.

Trawling has been likened to hunting game by clearcutting the forest. It's clearly unsustainable and yet it continues at be practiced at all-time record levels. For more on this, read this pdf, or go here to take a Google Earth tour of mudtrails worldwide. Finally, shrimp lovers go here for the 'skinny on shrimp.'