Final Report Summary - DEGREE (Development of fishing Gears with Reduced Effects on the Environment) Thirteen participants worked together to develop new gears/fishing techniques that have a lower impact on benthic habitats, to quantify the potential reduction of the physical impact as well as the negative effects on benthic communities, to weigh the socio-economic consequences of these changes against those of alternative management measures, e.g. closing of areas. They focused on the development of modified towed gears. A generic approach was chosen in which cases (e.g. North Sea, Mediterranean) can be worked out. The overall ecological impact to benthic systems has been assessed by developing physical/biological models verified by tests at sea. This provides a tool to fisheries managers to identify gear and sediment type combinations which will minimise impact to the habitat. A group of experts worked to appraise the socio-economic consequences of the new gears and techniques. Gear types under study involved: otter trawls, beam trawls, pulse beam trawls and dredges. The project recommends to further work along the lines of this project on tools to evaluate the likely ecosystem effects and economy of novel fishing gears designed to decrease the impact on marine ecosystems and contribute to sustainable fisheries. In particular there is a need to subject these new gears to the mathematical-physical models developed, continue on the work to link this physical information to effects on marine biota, and improve the models to predict likely effects of new gears on the marine ecosystem based on their characteristics and prior to their actual introduction into fishing fleets at a larger scale. A number of alternative fishing gears and gear modifications were developed, with the potential to lower mortality of benthic invertebrates and non-target demersal fish. The bottom impact of the new gear designs and practices were assessed by modelling effects on sediments, comparative fishing experiments, observing tracks made on the sea bed. The economic consequences of using the new gear were analysed for a number of cases. Among the gears tested and demonstrated to have reduced seabed impact were otter trawls with light weight doors and low impact ground gear, pulse trawls, light beam trawls and low impact oyster dredges. It was recommended to further work on the project findings through the development of innovative tools to enable an integrated evaluation of ecosystem effects of the developed alternative fishing gears, which were designed to decrease the impact on marine ecosystems and contribute to sustainable fisheries. Documentos relacionados Final Report - DEGREE (Development of fishing Gears with Reduced Effects on the Environment)
