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| METHOD & PROCESS |
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- Seiner
Throughout the last half century, the purse seiner has been the most commonly used net on West Coast fishing vessels. Purse seiners capture surface fish by encircling them with a long net and drawing or pursing the bottom of the net.
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- Purse seiner
Purse seining is the process of catching schooling fish near the ocean surface by circling them with a net. Once the fish have been encircled, a wire (purse line) running through the bottom of the net is winched tight to close the purse from below.
Purse seining for herring can be especially tricky as the entire process is run in the dark of night when herring swim to the surface to feed on rising phytoplankton. No lights are used until the seine is closed.
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- Trawler
Trawling is the operation of towing a net to catch fish and/or shellfish. The trawls are towed either with bottom contact or in midwater. Different devices providing the forces to keep the trawls open horizontally (otter boards, beams and two vessels and vertically (floats and weights). The catch principle is filtering the water. The towing speed varies, according to the type of trawl and trawling, to the target species, etc., from 1 to 7 knots, the most common being 3 to 5.
The trawl nets are cone-shaped net (made from two, four or more panels) which are towed, by one or two boats, on the bottom or in midwater (pelagic). The cone-shaped body ends in a bag or coded. The horizontal opening of the gear while it is towed is maintained by beams , otter boards or by the distance between the two towing vessels (pair trawling ). Floats and weights and/or hydrodynamic devices provide for the vertical opening. Two parallel trawls might be rigged between two otter boards ( twin trawls ). The mesh size in the codend or special designed devices is used to regulate the size and species to be captured.
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- Long line
A set longline consists of a main line and snoods with baited (occasionally unbaited) hooks at regular intervals and which is set, in general, on or near the bottom. The number of hooks, distance of snoods on the mainline and length of the snoods depends on the target species, the handling capacity and technology used. Longlines can be set as bottom lines (including on very rough bottom and/or coral reefs) or, less commonly, in midwater or even not far from the surface. Its length can range from few hundred meters in coastal fisheries to more than 50 km in large scale mechanized fisheries.
The fish are attracted by the natural or artificial bait (lures), hooked and held by the mouth until they are brought aboard the operating vessel which periodically hauls the gear.
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- Pots and traps
Pots are constructed either of wooden slats or, more commonly, coated wire mesh. They are set on the bottom individually or in strings and harvest various species of shellfish and finfish. In New Jersey s waters they are used to trap lobster, blue crabs, whelks (often called conch) and sea bass.
Pot fishing can be done in shallow estuaries, in inshore ocean waters and in deeper water offshore. The traps range in size from the two or three foot long crab pots to the very large, deep water traps used in the Bering Sea tanner and king crab fisheries. These can be ten feet square. The smaller pots are hauled from the bottom by hand while the larger traps require hydrtaulic haulers.
The pots are usually baited but often, particularly on flat, sandy bottoms, it is thought that the quarry enters traps as much for the shelter they offer as for food.
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