Despite bottom trawling being the most widespread, severe disturbance affecting deep-sea environments, it remains uncertain whether recovery is possible once trawling has ceased. Here, we review information regarding the resilience of seamount benthic communities to trawling. We focus on seamounts because benthic communities associated with these features are especially vulnerable to trawling as they are often dominated by emergent, sessile epifauna, and trawling on seamounts can be highly concentrated. We perform a meta-analysis to investigate whether any taxa demonstrate potential for recovery once trawling has ceased. Our findings indicate that mean total abundance can gradually increase after protection measures are placed, although taxa exhibit various responses, from no recovery to intermediate/high recovery, resistance, or signs of early colonisation. We use our results to recommend directions for future research to improve our understanding of the resilience of seamount benthic communities, and thereby inform the management of trawling impacts on these ecosystems.

尽管底拖网捕捞是影响深海环境的最广泛、最严重的扰动，但仍不确定一旦拖网捕捞停止是否有可能恢复。在这里，我们回顾了有关海山底栖生物群落对拖网捕捞的复原力的信息。我们专注于海山，因为与这些特征相关的底栖生物群落特别容易受到拖网捕捞的影响，因为它们通常以新兴、固着的表皮动物为主，而海山上的拖网捕捞活动可能高度集中。我们进行了一项荟萃分析，以调查一旦停止拖网捕捞，是否有任何分类群显示出恢复的潜力。我们的研究结果表明，在采取保护措施后，平均总丰度会逐渐增加，尽管分类群表现出不同的反应，从没有恢复到中/高恢复、抗性、或早期殖民的迹象。我们利用我们的结果为未来的研究推荐方向，以提高我们对海山底栖生物群落复原力的理解，从而为拖网捕捞对这些生态系统的影响提供管理信息。