NIWA
The Impact Assessment Framework CCAMLR uses summarises the cumulative footprint of all longline fishing efforts to date, including assumptions about the lateral movement of longlines. Because the area is so large, the total amount of seafloor touched by longline gear as of 2013 was less than 0.5% of the surface area within fishable depths. Additionally, no relationship between the occurrence of fragile invertebrate groups (VME indicator taxa) and the abundance of toothfish has been detected - i.e. we are not aware of any association of toothfish and VME indicator taxa that could result in the inadvertent targeting of VME taxa by fishermen targeting toothfish.