Fig 1.
The setup of the trawls (a), the aft part shows the section with a Flexigrid, followed by an excess fish excluder device in the first codend segment, equivalent to a conventional codend. A second codend segment with quality-improving attributes was attached after the size-selective codend segment and kept closed during fishing with the catch releaser. (b) The netting in the quality-conserving codend segment. (c) The catch release mechanism. (d) The conventional codend trawl beside the trawl with the quality-conserving codend.
Fig 2.
The dual sequential codend concept showing the first codend segment (a), where the fish are retained during towing, with the selective properties as legislated, followed by the quality-improving codend segment (b), in which the catch falls back during haul-back. The grey cylinder represents the catch releaser with the choking rope (red).
Table 1.
Catch Damage Index used for evaluating the damage inflicted on fish during trawling.
Fig 3.
An example of a good-quality cod (b) that would score 0 for all five categories within the Catch Damage Index. The cod in (a) is an example of a poor-quality cod, obtaining a score 2 on ‘gear marks’, 3 on ‘ecchymosis’, and 1 on ‘skin abrasion’.
Table 2.
Towing depth, start time, haul duration, catch weight, and mean fish length in the conventional and sequential codends.
Fig 4.
The score frequency for the five damage categories.
Catches from the conventional (black) and sequential (grey) codends.
Table 3.
Increased probability for obtaining a given score for all cases investigated, with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in parenthesis.