Development of sustainable skate and dogfish fisheries

Experiments were conducted to: (1) design and test an otter trawl to selectively harvest large skates, (2) design and test a gillnet/seine to selectively harvest large dogfish, (3) design and test an otter trawl with a single codend to harvest large dogfish, (4) design and test an otter lrawl with a double codend to harvest large__dogfish, and (5) to semi-process skates and dogfish on board. The purpose of the experiments was (1) to demonstrate a selective trawl that would catch large skates with no by-catch of small skates, cod, haddock, and flounders (multispecies), (2) to demonstrate a selective gillnet/seine which would result in no by-catch of small dogfish and multispecies (3) to demonstrate an otter trawl with a double codend which would result in less pressure on the fish in the codend and therefore land dogfish of higher quality, and (4) to develop methods of semi-processing dogfish at sea which would result in higher quality product and greater value added. We had originally proposed to test only the gillnet/seine for dogfish but when the gear developed for this experiment was not successful in tests, we added the third and fourth experiment to harvest dogfish with a single and double codend trawl. Grant no. NA56FK0088