Direct effects of beamtrawling on macrofauna in a sandy sediment in the southern North Sea

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Abstract
The presence of certain species of benthic infauna in catches from a beamtrawl indicated that tickler chains and the ground chain can scrape off successive layers of sediment and reach at least 6 cm into the sediment. Direct effects of beamtrawling on benthic species in the North Sea were determined by comparing faunal abundance before and after commercial beamtrawling on a hard-sandy sediment. In autumn 1989 three-fold trawling of the experimental area resulted in a decrease in density (10–65%) of a number of species of echinoderms, polychaetes and molluscs.