Commercial mid-water trawling for cod, haddock and saithe: Shifting effort to reduce impact on bottom fauna of bottom trawling(FHFinn182490)

Concerns have been raised about the impact of bottom trawling on the benthic community. In Norway, considerable damage to deep-water coral reefs by trawlers have led to the closure of areas and initiated mapping of larger bottom areas of the Barents Sea. In this project we will explore the implications of shifting effort from bottom to midwater trawling in order to reduce the bottom impact in the Barents Sea trawl fishery. Midwater trawl was commonly used in the Barents Sea trawl fishery for cod and hadd ock but was prohibited in 1974 due to reports of large catches of juvenile fish. To use midwater trawl to catch gadoids catch rates being taken by midwater trawls must be commercially viable. Second, the catch of juvenile fish must not be higher than for bottom trawling and finally fish that are sorted out/escape must survive. The project will mainly focus on these two first topics. In addition, the passage of non-target pelagic species will be studied in order to evaluate if survival studies are warrante d. Behavioural studies of both target and non-target species is essential in developing an efficient and species and size selective trawl. To develop suitable methodology to study species and size specific behaviour during midwater trawling is a major cha llenge during the project. If the project documents that part of the quotas for cod, haddock and saithe can be caught effectively by midwater trawl without negatively affecting the exploitation patter of target and non-target species, the overall impact of bottom trawling will be reduced. In addition, data collected on the behaviour of fish during the capture phase of the midwater trawl will provide valuable information to assess the sampling properties of midwater sampling trawls.