A 27 metre trawler fishing from Roses on Spain’s Mediterranean coast has been testing a pair of Polar Fishing Gear’s controllable Poseidon trawl doors with some highly promising results. The same pair of doors has since been transferred to another trawler for further testing with different trawl gear – and the first set of large-scale fully controllable Poseidon doors are almost ready sea trials under commercial conditions.
According to Atli Már Jósafatsson at Polar Fishing Gear, Port de Roses normally used a 2.4 square metre of pair of Jupiter doors that skipper Manuel Noruega likes for their stability when fishing for shrimp along canyons at 600 metre depths.
The pair of 2.5 square metre Poseidon doors with the wings of the doors at their middle setting out-performed the Jupiter doors, with an 82 metre spread compared to the usual 74 metres. A significant advantage for Manuel Noruega is that the Poseidon doors can be adjusted so that they can also be tuned to square his smaller groundfish trawl, making it possible to use the same doors for both sets of gear.
Atli Már Jósafatsson said that the wings of the doors are easily adjusted with the doors in the gallows, so that the wing settings an be altered to change the flow of water through the doors to get the right squaring power for the gear.
Now the same pair of doors is being passed to other trawlers along the Spanish coast to be tried out out under different conditions and depths, and with a variety of trawl gears.
He added that these doors are a smaller version of the large-scale doors that are now on their way to Iceland from the fabricator in Portugal.
This 14 square metre pair of doors fully controllable from the wheelhouse via an acoustic link is expected to be tested on pelagic vessel Polar Amaroq towards the end of September
