0 past simple and past participle of trawl
1 to pull a large, cone-shaped net through the sea at a deep level behind a special boat in order to catch fish:
2 to search among a large number or many different places in order to find people or information you want:
We trawled at 300 fathoms but only got a bit of stuff, but it turned out very valuable.
But even then the mine has to be trawled carefully in order to extract it.
In many cases, the information was held in electronic format, but in some cases the records had to be physically trawled.
There are no restrictions on the frequency with which a seabed may be beam trawled.
That is astonishing, given that we trawled through the legislation for three months often late into the night and the early hours of the morning.
The list of the great and the good will be trawled.
Certainly the quality of inshore fish justifies a higher price than the trawled fish, and such a classification is most necessary.
All possible opinions were trawled, and all alternative routes were examined.