1Fish with a trawl net or seine.

1. 1.1with object Catch with a trawl net.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • The stocks of fish, which people have been trawling for hundreds of years, declined dramatically as soon as the company started mining
   • They also collect water samples for the Marine Institute and samples of deepwater corals which are sometimes trawled up by Irish vessels.
   • Our new measures must include better technical standards, including bigger mesh sizes to prevent juvenile fish being trawled up and discarded.
   • Northeast Utilities Environmental Laboratory staff list it among fishes they have trawled in Long Island Sound.
   • There I had the opportunity to participate in research cruises and see firsthand the wonderful creatures that were trawled up from as much as 4,000 feet [1,220 meters].
   • And with this shaft of light, he says skippers should take the chance to prove haddock can be trawled without effecting cod.
   • And on this side of the Atlantic bizarre and beautiful fields of glass sponges have been trawled to oblivion.
   • First the pair drag steel rollers between them to break up the coral and then come back over the same area to trawl the fish.
2. 1.2 Sift through as part of a search.
   they trawled through twenty-five-year-old confidential files

   with object he trawled his memory and remembered locking the door

   Example sentencesExamples

   • But for whatever reason, even trawling my memory of the movie I can't come up with any directorial choices that seemed to enhance or deepen the movie.
   • There is a web facility which trawls all online news stories and writes a sort of composite article.
   • Stuck in Troy's apartment and unwilling to face the brashness of Broadway on a snowy February night in the heart of Manhattan, I instead surfed the internet and trawled through New York City's real estate turnover.
   • I trawled the MT support forum for relevant assistance.
   • She trawls auctions and markets for 50's and 60's retro designs.
   • I trawled through the accounts for the last three years to see where it had gone and found a host of different funds, all with balances.
   • Cynically, I could say their set list had a slight stench of predictability as they trawled through singles off both albums, finishing with the better known hits but leaving out a lot of their trademark experimentation.
   • But as I trawled through them all, I began to worry.
   • It is believed the group trawls the internet targeting websites where the registration has lapsed.
   • The contraption is trawling the waters between the Bridgewater Canal at Castlefield, through the Rochdale Canal in Manchester city centre and up the Ashton Canal to collect rubbish dumped in the water by visitors and locals.
   • So this evening hasn't been entirely productive - but four hours trawling the web has allowed me to gain good product knowledge and find solutions that will cost me £160 less than I had budgeted.
   • For two days we trawled a patch of water 3 miles or so off Mevagissey.
   • It paddles along the surface for thirty seconds, then dives to trawl the muddy bottom for worms and aquatic insects.
   • As part of their investigation, the police even trawled through the Evening Advertiser's CCTV footage to see if the thieves had been caught in the act.
   • And 20-odd years of experience earned in the contracts field and trawling the trade fairs and factories of Italy, Germany and Spain has given the couple plenty of time to suss out what works and what wears well.
   • I trawled through bookshops, I searched for the perfect cup of coffee, I bought records by Ella Fitzgerald from the second hand record shop on the way to the Grafton Centre.
   • For his research, Mr Shaw trawled through the minutes of more than 600 meetings, many beautifully hand-written in old Woolworths jotters.
   • She has spent long hours trawling the streets of Dumbarton to collect signatures for a petition, and she helped to organise a public meeting, opposing the health board proposals, which was attended by 300 people.
   • He trawled through public libraries and records offices for information about the ‘chariots’, and attempted to trace some of the people in his father's photographs and letters.
   • After his death, I trawled through all of his speeches I could locate, from his maiden speech at Westminster to the verbatim report of proceedings at Holyrood.
3. 1.3with object Drag or trail (something) through water or other liquid.
   she trawled a toe to test the temperature

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Capturing boys playing baseball and fishermen trawling the nets, his photographs knock aside traditional representations of Mt Fuji as a beautiful, unspoilt wonder to expose the ordinary human world that lives at its foot.

   Synonyms

   haul, pull, draw, tug, heave, trail, tow

1An act of fishing with a trawl net.

1. 1.1 A large wide-mouthed fishing net dragged by a vessel along the bottom or in the midwater of the sea or a lake.
   Example sentencesExamples

   • The second unknown squid lost its tentacles in the trawl net.
   • Dropping to deck level at 26m on the port side, the railing is intact and draped with several layers of trawl net.
   • South Africa made history in 1938 when a coelacanth was found in a trawl net in the East London harbour.
   • A trawl is a large fishing net that is towed along the bottom of the river.
   • We also know that many species are caught in phenomenally large numbers by fishing them, typically as by-catch from longline fishing worldwide, but also from trawls and gill net, than any other kinds of fishery.
   • Sampling was done with a Bongo trawl attached to a boat.
   • When I dived the Borgny, an old trawl net was draped round the stern along the seabed.
   • Most of the larger boats use single trawls while the smaller inshore vessels often fish by dropping creels in what supporters describe as a truly sustainable fishery.
   • The bridge can be a little confusing when conditions deteriorate, as it is draped in trawl net, but a diver can see and swim inside many parts of it.
   • The death of most of these turtles is due to drowning in trawl nets (and not by boat or propeller hits).
   • Shaking his head, Glanville tells me that he once dragged up the husk of a 1939 Oldsmobile in his trawl.
   • The torches illuminated the irregular shape of a trawl net.
   • At the end of his dive, woe betide any luckless invertebrate in the path of his trawl net.
   • In May 1990, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that as many as 55,000 sea turtles annually drown in American shrimp nets not equipped with turtle excluder device that allow turtles to escape the trawl net.
   • Briefly, animals were collected with a mid-water trawl net fitted with a light-tight, thermally insulated cod-end, brought to the surface in the closed cod-end, and sorted out under dim red light.
   • More supposed fuel for the anti-commercial fishing fire is the idea that fishing with trawls and dredges changes the bottom, and that such changes are not acceptable.
   • The trawl net is like a long bag, and dragged underwater behind the trawler for about four hours.
   • Whereas a trawl net has to be fairly solid because it's being dragged through the water behind a large vessel, so they tend to be quite distinctive.
   • A large trawl net has been snagged and abandoned close to the bridge.
   • The wreck is very heavily netted, with trawl nets wrapped closely around her.

2An act of sifting through something as part of a search.

3North American