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BENTHIS paper on physical impact pulse fisheries

Published on
April 13, 2015

Is pulse fishery causing less disturbance to the seafloor than traditional beam trawling? BENTHIS just published a new paper on this topic.

To quantify seabed alteration, BENTHIS researchers conducted an experiment in the Southern North Sea, just off the Dutch coast (15–22 m depth). Fishing was conducted with a commercial 4-m tickler chain beam trawl and a 4-m pulse beam trawl in different experimental plots.

Equipped with a very accurate multi-beam echo sounder, the BENTHIS researchers on board the RV Simon Stevin were able to measure the change of the seafloor bathymetry. In general, bathymetrical changes were between 1-2 cm after a single trawl and increased with increasing trawl passages. Numerical modelling revealed that tickler chains had a penetration depth of about twice that of the electrodes. The amount of sediment stirred up did not differ between both gears.

Jochen Depestele: “The results are the first step in understanding the impact of innovative pulse gears versus traditional ground fisheries on the seafloor ecology. Now we can start linking this to biological traits, such as the burying depth of vulnerable shellfish species, so that we can model the impact of new gears on the benthic community.”

Download Article:

Measuring and assessing the physical impact of beam trawling

More information on the fieldwork in 2013

BENTHIS North Sea case study First campaign completed