Icelandic company Polar Fishing Gear is finally ready for full-scale sea trials with its Poseidon controllable trawl doors and the sea trials are scheduled for next month.
According to Polar’s Atli Már Jósafatsson, the initial sea trials were carried out in January 2013 on board research vessel Árni Friðriksson, and the main stumbling block in the meantime has been to perfect the wireless control system.
Polar has been working with Canadian company Notus to get this right, and the Poseidon doors are now ready for their baptism of fire on board Westmann Islands trawler Vestmannaey with a 4 square metre pair of doors built with three adjustable foils each in the upper and lower sections.
Tests have already been carried out at the quayside to ensure that the remote link is functioning, and the next step is to see how the complete package performs at sea.
‘The advantages are that this makes it possible to place the doors just where the skipper wants them,‘ he said, adding that for demersal trawlers towing their gear with the doors flown off the bottom, the doors can be fixed to a height of 15 to 20 metres off the bottom and will stay there.
‘These will solve the problems that the pelagic trawlers encounter in fishing in the heavy currents off west Africa. They can be towing one way against the flow and see 20% too much spread, and going the opposite way with the current there can be 20% too little spread, and in both case the trawl is not configured properly with either to much opening or not enough,’ he said.
He commented that there are several customers waiting for the trials to be complete and the Poseidon doors to come onto the market.
‘Several of our regular customers have told us that they want to try them out when they are ready and we can probably sell a dozen pairs as soon as the Poseidon doors have been fully tested,’ Atli Jósafatsson said.
