Developing seal-safe fishing gear (Seal-Safe I) (39163)

Developing seal-safe fishing gear will primarily be focused on fish pots, which have the best potential for protection against seal attacks. Other advantages of pots includes being size selective, that the catch can swim freely inside the pot and is alive when the pot is emptied resulting in a higher quality and thus a higher price, high survival for discards, low bycatch of small cetaceans and seabirds, and that the pot does not have to be tended every day. Disadvantages include low catch rates compared to gillnets, and that they are not good at catching flatfish.

DTU Aqua will carry out a development project that includes the following components:
- Review of fishing gear as alternatives to gillnets.
- Optimizing existing pots to Danish conditions in collaboration with the fisheries.
- Fishing trials for cod with the optimized pots.
- Experiments with bait types.
- Studies of fish and seal behavior around pots.
- Dissemination of results to the Danish fishery.

DTU Aqua has established a collaboration with Swedish scientists, who have extensive experience with development of seal-safe fish pots.

The main challenge will be to increase the catch rates of the fish pots, so that seal-safe fish pots can be an economically viable alternative to set gillnets. If this is successful, changing from gillnets to fish pots can ensure the continued survival of the small-scale coastal fishery and at the same time reduce bycatch of e.g. marine mammals and seabirds.

Partners
National Institute of Aquatic Resources, DTU Aqua (coordinator)
Aarhus University, Denmark
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Nexø Vodbinderi, Denmark

Funding
The project is funded by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries through a special governmental Funding for sustainable fisheries (“Bæredygtighedspuljen”).

Research area: Ecosystem based Marine Management