Norway’s Directorate of Fisheries is urge seine netter skippers to take care after a number of incidents in which heavy catches have burst fishing gear, both this year and in previous years.
The Directorate is asking skippers to be cautious during this winter’s fishery, and is encouraging fishermen to use technical measures to limit catches before they reach a dangerous level in the fishing gear. The Directorate plans to submit proposals for a consultation on catch limitation systems.
There is some heavy fishing on some fishing grounds, and a couple of seine netters have lost catches in significant amounts, both times in the last week off Western Finmark and the Vesterålen while inspectors were on board, one of whom shot this video.
‘The reasons for this are complex, and include a lack of gear maintenance, weather conditions and the weight of catches,’ said Rolf Harald Jensen at the Directorate of Fisheries.
‘This is not acceptable and it is the industry’s responsibility to ensure that such incidents are avoided.’
Escape panels provide opportunities for excess catches to be released and some vessels are already using these, and experiments carried out by the Directorate of Fisheries and the Institute of Marine Research show high survival rates for fish that escape.
‘We expect that all seine netters fishing in areas with high fish density use these catch limitation systems to safeguard their own safety, catch and quality,’ Rolf Harald Jensen said.
Both the Directorate of Fisheries and the Coast Guard will be paying attention to fishing along the coast from West Finnmark and south towards Lofoten and Vesterålen.
