Experimental Fishing Using Large Entrance Spider Pots

Summary

This report describes fishing trials undertaken by commercial Shell fishermen based in the SW of England overseen by a Seafish employee based in Newlyn, Cornwall. This project arose from another Seafish trial, based in the West of Scotland looking at investigation the potential for targeting Deep Sea Red Crab (Chaceon affinis). The pots used in this project were originally used as part of the Red Crab project though had subsequently become surplus to requirements. The pots were thought to have potential in the SW spider Crab fishery as a possible alternative to the use of tangle nets. 90 pots were allocated during April/May 2006 to 10 fishermen working from 6 different ports around the SW coast, both on the North and South coasts. All the pots were rigged with a 14” cone entrance and a netted bottom as originally supplied by the manufacturer. The fishermen were also supplied with a logsheet to record catches in order to assess the effectiveness of these pots compared with a standard Inkwell or parlour pot. . On first inspection, fishermen were generally happy with the overall design of the pots, though the pots produced mixed results. The tendency being that they did not fish as well as standard inkwell pots fitted with 10” buckets. There were a number of reasons why the fishermen thought that these pots were not catching effectively, in the main it was thought that the Spider Crabs could too easily escape from the pots especially when the pots were not lying flat on the bottom due to insufficient weight in the base of the pot. The fishermen were invited to retain the pots and make any alterations they saw fit during the winter months to improve the pots performance.

Author

• R. Caslake

Publication Reference No.

SR615

Publication date

01 September 2006