The International Training Course in Trawl Technology that takes place every second year has been announced for the end of October, and for the first time this will be held at the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland’s flume tank in St Johns.
Fishing gear gurus Ulrik Jes Hansen, with his long background in fishing gear research and development in Denmark, and Mike Montgomerie, who followed a career as a fishing skipper with many years in the same field with Seafish in the UK, are running the five-day course.
Designed to provide an understanding of the fundamentals of trawl performance and engineering, with the emphasis on commercial fishing and seafood production, the intensive course covers a lot of ground in a few days. Participants come away with a thorough grounding in trawl design, hydrodynamic performance of trawls, fish behaviour, selectivity, discard reduction, environmental and seabed impacts, fuel consumption, and seafood sustainability initiatives.
The course is designed for people working in a variety of fishing industry sectors – and the five days in St Johns would be a benefit to anyone with a serious interest in the technical side of the fishing industry.
‘If you’re fishing with trawls, managing a fishing fleet, selling trawls, teaching students about them or you are using them as a sampling tool or a research object you are likely to gain from the course and get a new perspective on this often controversial fishing gear,’ Ulrik Jes Hansen said, commenting that in the past those participating in the course have generally been fishing company staff, seafood processors, brokers, auction staff, net makers, teachers and instructors in the academic world, government officials, eNGO representatives, fisheries inspectors, and people involved with certification programmes or fishery improvement plans.
The Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland provides further details on this year’s International Training Course in Trawl Technology, 28th October – November 1st.
