Seal-safe fishing (39421)

Project Details

Description

In the last 10-15 years, there has been an increasing conflict between fisheries and the growing number of seals in Danish waters. Both harbour and grey seals are involved in attacks on fish caught in fishing gear resulting in damaged fish as well as damaged fishing gear. These attacks occur exclusively in fishing with passive gear like gillnets, hooks/lines and fykes/traps. In some parts of the Danish waters, the damages are so high that they threaten the survival of the small-scale coastal fisheries, in particular fisheries for cod, salmon and lumpfish. It is unrealistic to reduce the number of seals to a level where damages are insignificant, so it is necessary to find other ways of resolving the conflict, like introduction of alternative fishing gear, where the gear and the catch is protected from the seals, or modification of existing gear. The present project will conduct trials with two different alternative gears: the Swedish Pontoon-trap and the small-scale Danish seine, and trials of a seal scarer for use with longlines or gillnets. The Pontoon-trap was originally developed in Sweden for the salmon fishery, but has also been used for other species like herring and, to a limited extent, for cod. The aim of our trials is to determine if the Pontoon-trap can attain catch rates of cod that are sufficiently high that the Pontoon-trap could be a viable alternative to gillnets. The aim of the trials with the small-scale Danish seine is to evaluate if it could be a viable alternative to gillnet fishery for cod. The trials will be conducted around Bornholm in August-October 2018 on board a gillnet vessel, which will be modified to accept the small-scale seine system. The aim of the seal scarer trials is to evaluate if seals scarers could reduce grey seal depredation on salmon caught on longlines. The trials will be conducted in the Baltic salmon longline fishery in February 2018 and January-February 2019. We will test two different types of seal scarers, the RT1 from AceAquatec and a prototype from GenusWave. 

Partners
National Institute of Aquatic Resources (DTU Aqua), Technical University of Denmark (coordinator)
Swedish University of Agriculture Science, Sweden

Funding
The project is funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) and the Danish Fisheries Agency.

Research area: Ecosystem based Marine Management
Research area: Fisheries Technology
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date12/09/201619/12/2018

Collaborative partners

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