1. Comparative fishing to evaluate the viability of an aligned footgear designed to reduce seabed contact in northern shrimp bottom trawl fisheries
- Author
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Winger, Paul D., Munden, Jenna G., Nguyen, Truong X., Grant, Scott M., and Legge, George
- Subjects
Trawling -- Methods -- Equipment and supplies ,Shrimping -- Methods -- Equipment and supplies ,Earth sciences - Abstract
We developed and evaluated an innovative trawl technology that reduces seabed contact while targeting northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) off the east coast of Canada. The innovative footgear, referred to as the 'aligned footgear', was evaluated in a flume tank to estimate contact area with the seabed and then tested at sea for engineering performance and catchability. Results demonstrated that the aligned footgear trawl produced a substantial reduction (i.e., 61%) in the predicted contact area with the seabed compared with the identical trawl equipped with traditional rockhopper footgear. A total of 20 paired tows (n = 40 tows) were subsequently conducted at sea to evaluate fishing performance. The aligned footgear trawl caught significantly more northern shrimp (+23%), capelin (Mallotus villosus) (+71%), and Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) (+99%) compared with the traditional rockhopper bottom trawl. Nous avons mis au point et evalue une technique novatrice de peche au chalut qui reduit le contact avec le fond marin en ciblant la crevette nordique (Pandalus borealis) au large de la cote est du Canada. Le bourrelet novateur, appele <>, a ete evalue dans un bassin a circulation d'eau afin d'estimer l'aire de contact avec le fond marin, puis a fait l'objet d'essais en mer pour evaluer la performance technique et la capturabilite. Les resultats demontrent que le chalut a bourrelet aligne entrame une reduction importante (c.-a-d. 61 %) de l'aire de contact prevue avec le fond marin par rapport au meme chalut equipe d'un bourrelet sauteur classique. Un total de 20 traits apparies (n = 40 traits) ont ensuite ete effectues en mer afin d'evaluer la performance de peche. Le chalut a bourrelet aligne a pris des quantites significativement plus grandes de crevettes nordiques (+23 %), capelans (Mallotus villosus) (+71 %) et fletans noirs (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) (+99 %) que le chalut de fond a bourrelet sauteur classique. [Traduit par la Redaction], Introduction Industrial-scale fishing of shrimp and prawns is predominantly conducted worldwide using mobile bottom trawls (see review by Gillett 2008). These modern fishing systems are more advanced and sophisticated than [...]
- Published
- 2018
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