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Skipper reports 30 % incerase in catch whit NOTUS
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Skipper Ben Downs operates the west coast
trawler FV Jamie Marie. Earlier in 2009, Ben installed a Notus
Trawlmaster net monitoring system. A 30% increase in catch was
reported as the skipper could fine tune the gear for optimal
fishing.
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Ben installed a Notus system to monitor: trawl wire lengths, door
spread, door angle, trawl depth, headline height and footgear
clearance. He has used Notus for mid water and bottom trawling.
All sensors transmit information back to the vessel wirelessly and
a 3D graphic is display in the wheelhouse.
Ben says “right away we could see the spread vary on the mid water
gear from 30 to 70 fa. We immediately started to work the
equipment to constantly keep 70 fa of spread.” After the spread
was sorted, Ben started to discover additional ways to fine tune
the gear. For example, he says “It was a waste of time to try and
fish while turning as one door would go so much higher than the
other. It was a lot better just to turn quickly and start fishing
again.”
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FV Jamie Marie
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Mid water trawling is a fast pace fishery. Ben says “one of the
biggest advantages of Notus is that you could constantly fine tune
the gear.” Notus measure the trawl warps (wirelessly) and also
indicates the adjustment when the trawl is off to one side. With
this feature Ben was able to see “with a 5-7 m difference on the
door distances, I could lose 20 fa of spread.”
Notus was just as important when bottom trawling. On the first tow,
Ben says “we found our door spread had a max of 80' instead of the
190' we needed to properly spread”.
Ben also found the door angle sensor to be very important. He says
“as soon as the doors break free from the bottom, we would see the
door stand straight up.” As well, when the doors were falling over
“we could throttle up to get the doors up again.” Another
important adjustment based on the door angle was the trawl wire
out.
Ben says “With too much warp out, the door would fall over and you
would have to haul in wire to make it stand up again.”
Surprisingly, Ben also learned that when bottom trawling, “the
amount of wire out makes little difference to the door spread.”
This gives the option to fish with less wire which does result in
fuel savings.
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World Fishing Today December 2. 2009 |
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