The quest for seal-safe fisheries—a comparison of alternative gear types in the Baltic Sea cod fishery

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

With recovering seal populations, there is a need to rethink fisheries technology and application to overcome economic and ecological obstacles while overcoming socially challenging situations. We have evaluated catchability, seal-induced damage, and potential commercial viability, considering handling time, of four passive fishing gear types: pots, pontoon traps, fyke nets, and gillnets in a seal-dense area. Results indicated that while gillnets initially exhibited the highest catch rates, they also experienced the most substantial seal damage, with over 50% of the catch affected. In contrast, pots and pontoon traps showed no seal damage, and fyke nets had an almost negligible damage rate of 2%. When extrapolated to a full day of fishing and accounting for handling time, fyke nets could potentially yield the highest average daily catch, followed by gillnets, pontoon traps, and pots. We conclude that alternative gear types, particularly fyke nets, along with pots and pontoon traps, show potential as more seal-safe and commercially viable alternatives to traditional gillnets in regions with high seal interaction where future research should focus on optimizing the design and handling of these alternative gears, and evaluating their performance across diverse conditions and scales.