Could robots save the oceans from overfishing?

Ok, it sounds like something out of Austin Powers (“sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads!”). But the future of sea fishing could well be electric pulses and laser beams, not nets, hooks and metal chains.

Commercial sea fishing has long been criticised as unsustainable and ecologically damaging, especially for bottom-dwelling species. The current catch methods of choice include bottom-trawling, beam-trawling and dredging. Bottom trawl nets as long as a football fields and as wide as a three-storey buildings drag along the ocean floor…