Innovative fishery methods

Northsea fishery in transition

During the last years the Dutch fishery for flatfish carried out a lot of innovations to become more sustainable. This is caused by high fuel prices and the ongoing criticism on the beam trawl fishery. Some of this innovations summed up:

Outrig
The outrig method is used for many years already in the USA for shrimp trawling. The principle is almost the same as beam trawling, with this big difference: there is no big steel beam to keep open the net, but the net is kept open with trawl doors, by which the resistance under water is much less and the fuel consumption is driven back too. Disadvantage is that this catching method can't be used in bad weather conditions.

Sumwing
The sumwing is another alternative to the beam trawl. The sumwing has instead of a steel beam (as the beam trawl has), a kind of wing which floats through the water. Therefore the resistance in the water is less, and so less fuel is needed.

Pulse trawl
The pulse trawl is another variant on the beam trawl, which does use a steel beam, but no heavy chains to wake up the fish, but electrical pulse wires. These give very light electrical shocks, whereby the fish is startled (especially dover sole) and swims into the net. The fuel savings are quite high, but catches from plaice still remain behind.

Pulswing
The pulswing is (as the name says) a combination of the pulse trawl and the sumwing. So it's a trawl net kept open by a wing instead of a beam and with no chains, but electrical pulse wires to get the fish into the net. Through this combination the fuel consumption is reduced and the bottom damage and resistance in the water is lower too.