TLE-Fishing gears

• Fishing gears are instruments or devices utilized in taking fish and other fishery species.
• Active fishing gears are devices characterized by gear movements and/or the pursuit of the target species by towing, lifting, and pushing the gears, surrounding, covering, dredging, pumping and scaring the target species to impoundments.
• Examples of active fishing gears include trawls, purse seines, bag nets, Danish seines, paaling, and drift gill net.
• Passive fishing gears are devices where the capture of fish is generally based on the movement of the target species towards the gear.
• Examples of passive fishing gears include hook and line, fish pots, traps, and gill nets set across the path of the fish.
• Gill nets, seine nets, surrounding nets, trawl, harvesting machines, and others are examples of fishing gears.
• Grappling and wounding gears are long-handled implements which can be pushed, thrown or shot for killing, wounding or grappling fish or mollusks, commonly operated by hand in shallow waters, from the shore or from the boat, more common in inland waters but also in the sea, examples include spears, rakes, clamps, tongs, harpoons, and wrenching gears.
• A trap is a stationary fishing gear with many variations in structural form, material used, operation techniques and targeted species, operated in a very wide range of depths, in inland estuarine, or marine waters, set in coastal waters, allows release of undersized species or juveniles, examples include Fish trap, Crab trap, Squid trap, Nautilus trap, Shrimp trap, Cover pot.
• Hook and Line are gears where fish is attracted by a natural or artificial bait (lure) placed on a hook fixed to the end of a line or snood, on which they get caught.
• Trawl nets are cone-shaped nets towed by one or two boats, on the bottom or in midwater (pelagic), with the horizontal opening of the gear maintained by beams, otter boards or by the distance between the two towing vessels (pair trawling).
• Purse seine nets are made of a long wall of netting framed with float line and lead line, usually of equal or longer length than the former, and having runs a purse line made from steel wire or pipe which allow the pushing of the net.
• The major potential detrimental impact of trawling on species can be the capture and removal from the ecosystem of small-sized organisms and non-target species, which frequently are discarded at sea, and can be mitigated by use of larger meshes in the cod ends.
• Harvesting machines are new types of gears used to extract fish from water by direct pumping or forced sifting, limited to a small number of species.
• The potential negative impact of fishing methods may include bycatch/discards of undersized species, non-marketable or non-target species, particularly with the use of small mesh-size nets.
• The limitation of surrounding nets could be in too shallow waters where the depth is less than the height of the surrounding net during the fishing operations, potentially damaging the net.
• Gathering by hand, electrofishing, blast fishing, and use of chemical stupefying methods are other fishing methods.
• Lampara nets are shaped like a dust pan or a spoon with two lateral wings and a central bunt with small meshes to retain the catch.
• Seine nets are used for surrounding fish both from the sides and from underneath, preventing them from escaping by diving downwards.
• Surrounding nets can be large netting walls set for surrounding aggregated fish both from the sides and from underneath, thus, preventing them from escaping by diving downwards.
• Surrounding nets can be surface nets which can be used everywhere in both inland and marine waters, as long as there is space for the operation of a large net.
• Dredges are gears which are dragged along the bottom to catch scallops and other shellfish from the sea bed.
• Gillnets can be set or anchored to the bottom or left drifting, free or connected with the vessel.
• Target species are pelagic, demersal and benthic species.
• One or more dredges can be used at the same time.
• Hauled by hand in small-scale fisheries.
• Several types of net may be combined in one gear, or as is more usual in large numbers placed in line (fleets of nets).
• Trammel nets are a type of gillnet.
• Gillnets have floats on the upper line (headrope) and, in general weights on the ground-line (footrope).
• Examples of falling gears include cast nets and cover pots.
• Examples of gillnets include set gillnets and drift nets.
• Falling gears are gears that are clapped down on the prey to be captured.
• There are two types of dredges: boat dredges (heavy dredges towed by boats) and hand dredges (lighter ones operated by hand in shallow waters).
• Gillnets and entangling nets are string of single, double, or triple netting walls, vertical, near by the surface, in midwater, on the bottom in which fish will gill, entangle or enmesh.
• Dredges consist of a mouth frame to which a holding bag constructed of metal rings or meshes is attached.
• Liftnets are horizontal netting panels or bag-shaped like a parallel piped, pyramid or cone with the opening facing upwards which are submerged at a certain depth, left for a while, the time necessary for light or bait to attract fish over the opening, then lifted out of the water by hand or mechanically.
• Falling gears are used for capturing the shoal of fish swimming near the water surface or single fish.
• There are three main types of liftnets: portable hand lift nets, boat-operated lift nets (used in general with light attraction) and shore or shallow water-operated lift nets.
• Operated in wide range of depths, in inland or sea waters.
• Examples of fishing gears include vertical lines, drifting long lines, Pole and lines.
• Seine nets are a type of gillnet.