This past week I went fishing on the F/V Marion J, whose crew were using our experimental gill nets in their quest to catch Dogfish. Although we only hauled 2 strings containing 2 experimental nets, the results looked promising.
First, for those of you who do not know how gill netting works, here is a quick breakdown. Fishermen string together nets like the ones shown to the right, approximately 11 nets long. They set the nets on the bottom in this case, and let them soak for 24-48 hours. The fish can't see the nets and swim headfirst into them where they are entagled. Then, the crew comes along and hauls the nets, picks the fish, and re-sets the net. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are pictures (and videos) showing those processes. |
| Part of the machinery that pulls in the nets. |
Overall, our experimental nets performed well! If you look at the graph below you can see both nets caught more Dogfish than the normal net it was being compared to (in this case the net right after). We caught 3 Cod in the first string, of which our experimental net caught 1, and 0 Cod in the second string.
Thanks for reading! We should have more data by the end of the week!
-JT
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| A nice Monkfish we caught the same day |
