Frosti from Iceland uses Jupiter pelagic doors catching off the seabed

Saturday, 10 October 2009 00:00

The Grenivik factory trawler FROSTI is using Jupiter pelagic trawl doors to spread their bottom gear with very good results.

FROSTI has used a pair of Neptune 5,7 square metres doors of 2400 kg each door with good results sperading their bottom gear and wanted to try to use pelagic doors off the seabed to gain same results in fishing but reduce fuel consumption and maintenance costin trawl doors and bridles.

"We wanted to downsize the trawl doors as much as possible but keeping in mind that FROSTI catches in less than 40 fathoms depth to more 200 fathoms gave us less space" says Atli Már Jósafatsson from Polar Fishing Gear.

We started to build a pair of Jupiter 4,3 square metres doors with the option to add sections to increase size if needed to gain sufficient spread when fishing in shallow water.

With the Jupiter 4,3 doors we gained sufficient distance between doors in deeper water and about 90% of bridles length in shallow water. When working in shallow water the doors where less than 5 fathoms off the bottom so we decided to add section in the doors and fit them with shoes section so they can put the doors touch the seabed if needed.

Today, using the Jupiter 4,8 square metres doors of 1300 kg each door in minimum angle of attack and achieves greater spread than when using the Neptune 5,7 square metres doors of 2400 kg each door.

When using the traditional bottom rigging with the Neptune 5,7 square metres doors, they use 30 fathoms double bridles and 15 fathoms single which gave them +45 fathoms distance between doors.

With the semi-pelagic off the seabed rigging, they achieve over 70 fathoms distance between doors using 30 fathoms double bridles, 15 fathoms single bridles, 5 fathoms of anchore chain and another 15 fathoms of single bridles to the trawl door.

Very promising results with similar catch ratio to previous trips and fuel consumption is less.