Commercial Fishing Trials of a Twin Rig Trawling System Using a Two Warp Arrangement - 'Cygnus Star'

Summary

This report describes the follow-up work resulting from initial gear handling trials of a twin-trawl system using a two-warp arrangement. The system was evaluated in a situation as near to a normal commercial fishing exercise as was possible. The exercise took place in the Nephrops fishery on the North West coast of Scotland using the MFV ‘Cygnus Star’ which spends most of its fishing time involved in this fishery. Apart from evaluating the handling of the two-warp system itself, the opportunity was taken to examine the performance of two nets rigged with rockhopper ground gears for use on hard ground. As far as we were aware, the twin-rig system has not previously been tried using rockhopper gear. The main aim of the exercise was to assess the commercial viability of operating such a system. The work carried out in this project was funded by MAFF as part of their 1987/88 Commission of Fisheries Research Projects, Code IAE16. This report has been produced from a scanned original and may therefore contain some formatting and other inaccuracies. In cases where this affects the technical content, a paper copy of the original report can still be obtained from Seafish.

Publication Reference No.

SR336

Publication date

01 June 1988